Creator of the World’s Most Unappealing Repasts?

For the past couple weeks, our family has been in a veritable frenzy of franticness preparing for a large Easter production our church is doing next week. 

Here’s a favorite shot that I took during a recent rehearsal.

Since Steve, Sarah and I are all heavily involved in all sorts of capacities, we’ve had dozens of evening rehearsals to juggle. That means that dinners have consisted of whatever could be put on the table in the speediest way possible.

Last Thursday, a little before 5 pm, I zoomed into the kitchen, screeched to a halt, and stood and pondered things for a moment. I hadn’t had time to go to the grocery store and we needed to eat by 5:30 since we had a rehearsal at 6 pm. 

What to do? Oh, what to do?

Well, they don’t call me The Queen of Leftovers for nothing because I threw myself into instant, amazing, impressive, efficient, culinary action. And just what action was that?

I’m glad you asked.  

I speedily retrieved a bag of four-week old, leftover baked ziti from the freezer and plopped it into a dish.  (Rachael Ray, watch your back, Sweetie. I have no doubt that I”ll be taking your place soon!)

And look at this!  To make things all the more impressive, I pulled out some shredded frozen chicken which had been smushed into a Ziploc bag.

Yum!

But wait!  It gets better! 

To the partially thawed ziti casserole and shredded chicken I added. . . . wait for it . . . . a jar of spaghetti sauce.   And yum yet again! 

Can you believe that THIS gloppy conglomeration is what I opted to serve my sweet little family for dinner? 

Yep.  It’s true I did.

But before you dub me the Creator of the World’s Most Unappealing Repasts, let me  ‘splain.

First of all, I did mix the above ingredients together so that they had less of a unappealing appearance. 

(Note: I also wiped down the sides of the baking dish so that the ingredients didn’t get that lovely “smeared and baked on” appearance.  Although as you can tell from later pictures; I didn’t wipe down the dish quite enough. If I hadn’t been in such a big hurry, I would have mixed the three ingredients in a bowl and then spooned them into the casserole dish.)

Next up? I’ve always believed that cheese covers a multitude of unattractive, unappealing culinary gloppiness.  

I put some pieces of sliced cheddar under the low fat grated cheddar simply because it was getting a little dried out and I was trying to use it up.

Then, because cheese is our friend, I sprinkled on some Parmesan.

The Parmesan was followed by some parsley.  (It’s starting to look a little better, isn’t it?)

I also tried a new recipe for “speedy biscuits” which I am not going to share with you.

Not because I don’t love sharing recipes with you but because the the speedy biscuits didn’t turn out all that wonderfully.

However, they they looked pretty for the pictures so that’s what counts, right?

Since I was in the aforementioned hurry, I popped the casserole in the microwave for about 10 minutes to get it started heating and then put it in the oven another 10 minutes to finish heating and to melt the cheese a little.  (I could also have broiled it for a minute at the end to brown the cheese. But I didn’t)

And here’s the final product!  Fairly yummy looking, isnt it?

In about 30 minutes, I went from the picture on the left to the picture on the right.  I used up some leftovers (ziti, chicken, cheese) and saved money on going out to eat.  

PLUS, we made it to rehearsal on time.

Win. Win. Win.