Discovery Bean Casserole
Did you know that Green Bean Casserole, the staple of 1950′s housewives the nation over, is an entirely pantry possible dish?
I didn’t quite realize it myself, given the snotty anti-canned food rearing I experienced in my mother’s home. Yet, as I grew older, and continued to scoff at the canned vegetables aisle, I became an avid fan of the Green Beans served at Tiny’s Diner in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Damn, I love their green beans, I said one day while dining with my mother. I wonder how they cook them.
They’re just canned, kiddo.
Her words literally blew my effing mind. Had I been lied to my whole life? Were canned green beans better than fresh in my strange, but picky land of palette? To discover the answer to this conundrum I bought a few canned green beans and proceeded to unleash Green Bean Casserole upon the household.
It was delicious.
Yet, here we have further discovery – after cooking up a batch of Sloppy Joe Turkey Meatloaf (recipe to follow) I thought it might be homey and rustic of me to produce an equally old-fashioned side dish. Yet, when ravishing the pantry for the Cream of Mushroom soup I need to concoct this staple of homey cuisine, I found the well had run dry. “We only have Cream of Chicken! Why God!?” I panicked momentarily only to hear my brother say, “Use the Cream of Chicken. Sounds good to me.”
Oh, it doesn’t just sound good, ladies and gentlemen. It was a revelation. Green Bean Casserole with a low fat Cream of Chicken Soup instead of Mushroom made the sun shine just a little brighter. A chorus of angels sang from within my oven when I retrieved it with a mitted hand.
Think me insane? Try it yourself.
2 cans of CANNED Green Beans
1 can cream of chicken
3/4 cup lowfat milk
1 1/3 cup of French’s French Fried Onions
Directions: Combine soup and milk in a 9X9 casserole dish, until fully mixed. Then add the two cans of green beans (drained first, please) and half the onions. Mix until everything is covered in the soupy goo. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, retrieve from oven and add rest of onions to the top in a fancy design or abstract sculpture of your choice and return to oven for another 5 minutes.
This dish cooks perfectly in unison alongside a meatloaf.
Eat it and weep.
