Potato Casseroles

I've been craving potato casserole.  Sorry I don't have links for these, but I copied down a couple of recipes (onto paper!), one for the crock pot and one not for the crock pot. I haven't started early enough in the day to use the crock pot, but I thought that recipe had better ingredients, even though I don't really measure the ingredients and I added extra veggies.

This was the first one I made earlier in the week:

Picky eater #1 liked the first casserole enough for one small plateful. He liked today's enough for two small platefuls.

So, yeah, I made it again today, but this time instead of using red potatoes like last time, I used tater tots. Also, I sauteed an onion and some garlic in butter, then added the tater tots to that and a bag of frozen mustard greens and then some frozen corn. Then, I removed it from the heat and added 3/4 of a rectangle of cream cheese. I didn't have sour cream this time, so I used plain yogurt, and butter and about a cup of cheese and seasonings like lemon pepper, seasoned salt, parsley, sesame seeds. I think that's it. Then, put it in the buttered cake pan and popped it into the oven at 375F for 20 minutes, and then add more cheese on top and cook another five minutes.

Delicious!  Well, Picky Eater #2 wouldn't even taste it. The first time, he didn't even want to be in the same room as it, because he didn't like the way it smelled. Today, I cooked him some plain frozen corn, so he happily ate that. See how happy he is?

These two liked it, both times.

I think tonight's was more flavorful because of the onion and mustard greens, and probably because the processed tater tots were already flavored. Oh well.

She liked it! She was the last one at the table.

Caramel cookie bars

I was looking for a way to use some of the salted caramel that I made too salty. Today, my son's Pre-Algebra class was having a party for the last day of class, so I made caramel cookies for him to take.

I used this recipe to begin with: caramel-bar-cookies, and then I added the salted caramel on top along with some drizzling of sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips, walnuts and coconut. Kinda like Magic Cookie Bars, but with a more cookie like base than the graham crackers with melted butter.



Also, it is made as a bar on a cookie sheet. I didn't get it spread all the way to the edges, but it expanded to fill the whole cookie sheet as it baked. I probably could have baked it a little longer as they are very soft, but the ones around the edges were getting crunchy. Picky eater #1 volunteered to eat all of them and he doesn't even like caramel! He really likes Magic Cookie Bars, though.



I made some no-bake oatmeal cookies last week and he wouldn't even taste them. I told him he wasn't doing his cookie eating duty. He said, "Mo-o-om, this is a weird conversation."



My son's teacher said they were delicious and thought about asking for the recipe, but then she figured that she would make them and eat them. So, I think they were a hit.