Theme Food Week: Comfy,Cozy Casseroles {January}

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So, has time sped up lately? It seems like I was just posting about December's Theme Food Week (of course I suppose that might have something to do with being late getting that one up....... heh heh). Now here I am again with another Theme Food Week wrap-up.  This week had some really yummy recipes.  And it was a theme that almost didn't come to be.  When I planning out the next few months of Theme Food Weeks I had actually originally planned on doing the theme that's going to be next month for January, but then I was having a horrible time coming up with something for February, nothing else I was coming up with just seemed quite right, and honestly even the theme I originally planned for January just didn't seem quite right for January either.  So at some point in all of this I was looking for a completely unrelated pin, but couldn't remember what board I had pinned it to so I was just looking through all my recent pins. {did you know you could do that? I just found this out, but I feel like everyone else probably already knew haha}.  I came across a couple of casserole recipes that I had pinned recently, and it dawned on me.  Casseroles! Perfect for cold winter evenings. There's almost nothing better than a warm, cheesy, hearty casserole to make you feel all comfy and cozy in the winter.  And there's a wide variety of casseroles so it wouldn't feel like we were eating the exact same thing for four nights straight.  I raided my Pinterest board and actually came up with 5 casseroles that I had to try out, and amazingly we actually managed to do all 5 nights without anything else coming up to postpone any of it! {it's a miracle! haha}.

So here we go.....

Comfy, Cozy Casseroles:

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I have to say that most of these recipes are not exactly the lightest, healthiest recipes, but that's not really what I was going for here (although the cheddar-broccoli quinoa casserole is pretty darn healthy), but since we were going for comfy and cozy and yummy, they definitely fit the bill.  Also it was a week that I was able to use some of the tons of recipes I have pinned that I still need to try, and trying new recipes is supposed to be one of the purposes of Theme Food Weeks

Monday: Tortellini Bake with Sauteed Green Beans:

  This recipe was actually the pin that precipitated this week's theme.  I had pinned it not too long ago, and it just looked so yummy! (and it was!).  There's a bit of a funny story behind my making of this casserole though.....  Last Saturday I had gone through all the recipes and read through them quickly to get an idea of the recipe and to copy down the ingredient lists to make my shopping list for the week.  Then, on Monday as I went back to my pin to get the recipe back up to make it that night, suddenly it told me the link was no good.  I was using my phone because our house internet was out that day so I thought perhaps it was just something weird going on there, so I tried typing the address into my browser, and it told me the page didn't exist.  Huh? So I tried again several times that day and even double checked the address with the history on the browser on my computer and it just seemed like it had completely disappeared.  Fortunately it was a simple recipe and I had written down the amounts off the ingredients I needed with my grocery list so I was able to make it from memory from when I had looked the recipe over, over the weekend, but I was all prepared to have to write this post without a link to give you to the recipe.  Just for giggles today, though, I went back to my pin and tried it one last time and this time it worked.  So I don't know whether it was some issue with trying to do it on my phone (although I'd looked at it on my phone when I was first planning the week's dishes) or whether the blog's site was just having technical issues on Monday, but either way, it is back, so here's the recipe. And then the green beans of course I just sauteed in olive oil with salt, pepper, and garlic.

Tuesday: Chicken and Spinach Pasta Bake:

Now let me start this by saying that this was a really good dish.  My husband and I decided, though, that it has the potential to be amazing.  One change that I plan on making next time is to add more garlic.  Now I will say that the cloves I used were on the smaller side, so maybe even just using good size cloves would make the difference, but I will definitely be using more next time.  I also had to make some extra "sauce" for it after I mixed it all up it seemed too dry.  And if you notice the author did mention it seeming dry and pouring more half and half over it before baking it.  I actually melted down some more of the chive and onion cream cheese with the half and half and added it to the mix instead of just more half and half.  Another little change that I think I'll make next time is the type of tomatoes I used.  I used grape tomatoes because I liked the idea of the cherry tomatoes mentioned in the recipe, but the store didn't have any when I went, so I used the grape tomatoes instead.  And again it was still good, but I think next time I will use chopped Roma tomatoes.  (also the grape tomatoes definitely needed to be salted lightly before being added to the recipe, but with a different tomato that might not be necessary).  I did use partly whole grain pasta in the casserole, just to try to make it slightly healthier, but I have to say, while I love Barilla's Whole grain Angel Hair pasta I wasn't as big a fan of the whole grain penne, but it was pretty good for this casserole, especially since I mixed it with regular bowtie pasta. Here's the link to the recipe : Chicken and Spinach Pasta Bake

Wednesaday: Cowboy Casserole and Texas Toast:

Okay, let's start this with a confession.... I cheated on the Texas Toast, and just bought frozen Texas Toast instead of making it myself, man was it good though...  So now that that's out of the way....  Here is the recipe for the Cowboy Casserole.  It was so good, and warm, and filling.  As my best friend said when we were talking about it, you know its going to be good when it has "cowboy" in the title.  The fact that it's between tater tots is a good sign too.  There was really only one thing I did differently for this one, and if you read the recipe and know me it would be obvious.  I can't eat anything with mushroom in it.  I don't know if I'm allergic to it or something or just REALLY don't like them, but anything with even cream of mushroom soup (even if it doesn't really taste like mushrooms - which is what makes me think I might be allergic) makes me gag.  So usually I just replace cream of mushroom with cream of chicken, but that doesn't really work for everything, and I didn't think cream of chicken would work for this, so I looked at what other types of condensed cream soups there were and came up with cream of potato. I used that instead and it worked really well and the casserole came out delicious.  (of course I think I might have also used a bit more cheese than the recipe actually called for too hehe).

Thursday: Cheddar and Broccoli Quinoa Casserole:

This is basically a better (healthier and heartier) version of the cheesy broccoli rice casserole that I'm sure we've all had at some point or another.  The recipe for this calls for chicken in it, which would be delicious of course, but we hadn't had any seafood yet this week, so I decided to do shrimp in it instead (kind of a cheese and broccoli rice casserole and shrimp and grits mash up lol) I used frozen precooked shrimp so I just thawed them out and mixed them in before putting it in the casserole dish, but if I do shrimp in it again I think I will season them with some Old Bay before mixing them in, they just seemed like they needed a little more oomph, and I think that would do it.  Again I may have also used a little more cheese than actually called for (I wasn't really measuring the cheese in any of these casseroles, just kind of estimating and eyeballing it).  This is where you'll find the recipe: Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

Friday: Meatball Sub Casserole:

Let me tell you this was such a great way to top off this week! So yummy and easy to make.  here is the recipe: Meatball Sub Casserole.  And of course, me being me, I did make a couple changes.  one of those was completely unintentional and I actually have no idea why it happened.  As I was making the cream cheese mixture I somehow read 1tsp Italian Seasoning as 2tbs Italian Seasoning.... don't ask because I have no idea how that happened.... it's not even like it was originally 2tsp and I just made it tablespoons instead... there is literally nothing the same about 1tsp and 2tbs.... the only thing I can think is that there are several other things I make somewhat regularly that use 2tbs Italian seasoning so I just measured that out, out of habit.....? who knows.  I realized my mistake right after mixing it up, but I thought, it's Italian seasoning, it's not like its salt or pepper, it might be fine.  So I tried a little bit of it to check (I thought that if it was a disaster that I had two half blocks of cream cheese left over from other things that might still be good), but it was actually really good with 6 times as much Italian seasoning as it was supposed to have.... so basically use anywhere between 1tsp (which I really don't think would be quite enough actually) and 2tbs, lol.  I also got turkey meatballs instead of regular for two reasons, first, because I don't like regular frozen meatballs for some reason, and secondly, I try to limit the amount of red meat we eat, and I thought it was really good with the turkey meatballs (I used Wegman's brand), so keep that in mind as a option.  Oh, and one other minor thing is that when I went to Walmart to get the Italian bread they had garlic and cheese (or something like that) Italian bread so I got that instead of plain.

*Also I forgot to mention on each individual day, but any of the recipes that call for sour cream I use Greek yogurt instead... I prefer Greek yogurt to sour cream, and of course it's better for you. I've always used it interchangably with sour cream and never had a problem, and actually I've noticed lately most recipes say sour cream or Greek yogurt anyway. But definitely for anything this week I used Greek yogurt.

So there you have it, another Theme Food Week, come and gone.  Make sure you keep an eye out for February's Theme Food Week.  Subscribe to the blog to make sure you don't miss anything ;)