THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 3, 1996 TAG: 9605020155
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Whenever I'm asked to contribute food to a family with youngsters, I scribble ``kid-friendly casserole'' on the sign-up sheet before I pass it along.
If anybody wants specifics, I tell them that it's made of the kind of stuff that creatures between the age of their first tooth and their first traffic ticket are willing to eat.
If they want more specifics, I tell them that it's anything that's cooked to death, doesn't have to be chewed and has nothing green in it.
Having been a teacher in one of my previous work lives, I then go on to give a more detailed explanation on what cooking for anyone under 12 involves.
The process has little to do with food pyramids, fancy seasonings or eye appeal.
It has everything to do with limited ingredients (no dish should have more than three, two is even better and one stands quite nicely alone); nutritional value (there should be little, if any) and texture (none is best).
When it comes to casseroles, the choice for 8-year-olds of my generation was something known as American Chop Suey.
I never saw a recipe for it, but the preferred method of putting it together went something like this.
First you took a pound box of macaroni and cooked it until the elbows resembled fat, flaccid forearms. Then you poured off the water and dumped what remained into a very large bowl.
Next you fried up a pound of hamburger - the cheap kind with the high fat content - breaking it into very small chunks as you went along. When the pale pink meat turned to steely gray, you dumped the contents of the skillet, pan drippings and all, into the bowl with the macaroni.
Then you emptied the contents of a couple of cans of tomato soup into a separate bowl, thinned it down with a half can or so of milk and poured the mixture over the macaroni and hamburger.
This accomplished several goals. It turned the gray meat back to red (a food color that is as acceptable to kids as green is unacceptable), it allowed the pasta to get even softer and it added the third most universally accepted kid flavor: ketchup. Which, in the food hierarchy, comes right after chocolate and peanut butter and just before hamburger and grape jam.
If you considered yourself a gourmet cook, you added a little salt to the mixture. If you were particularly adventurous, you could add some pepper as well.
If your family was worldly enough to have traveled more than 100 miles from home you could try frying a little onion along with the hamburger. Still, even in the most sophisticated households that was considered a very risky step.
Finally you transferred the mixture to a well greased clear glass baking dish and cooked it at 350 degrees until the contents bubbled and the scent of hamburger and tomato soup filled the kitchen.
Make note of that clear glass part. Anything else might allow the cook to hide something deadly in the mixture - say canned peas or fresh green beans, for instance.
By the time my boys came along, kids were slightly more adventurous. Their casserole of choice was something with flour tortillas, hamburger, mild Cheddar cheese, tomato sauce and taco seasoning. A few more ingredients, a little more spice but the idea was the same.
And so was the baking dish. The one time I put it in an opaque casserole, the oldest took his first bite and swore he had just been poisoned by a hidden spinach leaf. He then gathered up his brothers and took them to Taco Bell for supper.
Did I mention that all but the youngest were in college at the time?
Kids may have changed a little since those days, but not much. My toddler grandson's favorite lunch is two bites of a plain hamburger. I have yet to see him with a vegetable greener than a french fry in his mouth.
And I know he's already been warned to watch out for anything that Grandma tries to serve from a dish that you can't see through.
I figured that out when I gave him some oatmeal in a brown bowl the last time he was here. He examined it for a few seconds, gave me an accusatory look then turned everything onto the kitchen table.
Finding no foreign objects, he attacked the mound with two fingers and gave me a big smile.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go look for a Pyrex dish. I have this sick friend with two kids who needs supper brought in tomorrow and the last thing she needs is a mound of American Chop Suey to clean up. by CNB