Thursday night Gratin

Came home tonight to find Pamela greeting me at the door as she ran off to the market for essentials (dog food, milk, kitty litter), so I went searching the cabinets for dinner fixings.

On the counter was a couple of potatoes left over from baked potato/chili night on Monday. Looking in the fridge showed a 1/2 stick butter some milk and an opened bag of Mexican mix shredded cheese.

Turn the oven on ... 425 degrees ... now .. go do it, while you get the rest of the ingredients and tools necessary to do the job.

Washed the taters, and then did a quick and dirty job peeling them. Not really caring if I got it all peeled off, just .. I don't know ....60%? 75%?

I sliced them into thin slices, layering the casserole pan with a few layers, making sure to each layer (salt, black pepper, and Italian Seasoning). On the top layer after the seasoning I added the cheese and then about 3/4 of a cup of milk.

The oven was hot and ready by then, so I covered it in foil and then put it in the oven, let it bake for about an hour, then pulled the foil off and turned the broiler on and allowed the bubbly mixture to get brown on top.

Pull it from the oven and let it rest for a few minutes, then plate and enjoy! We had ours with a Kielbasa that I sliced into rounds and stir fried in the cast Iron skillet until they has nice crunchy bits.

Variations to the theme:

• Add a thin layer of carrots


• Add some caramelized onions


• Add some browned Italian Turkey sausage


• oooohhhhh some peas! for a bit of color...

This was almost as easy and pain free as making Quiche, but not quite.

Cub ate everything we put in front of him (potatoes, cheese... how can you lose?). Thumper on the other hand, ate a few pieces of kielbasa and called it good. *SIGH*