"Dear God, Help This Casserole!"

I know a picture of a mostly eaten casserole does not have the aesthetic appeal...

...of, for example, a patchwork potholder I made for a wedding shower last week.   

Or the graduation cap we made with money a couple weeks ago...

...for our niece Danielle Lucas, Rob's daughter...

...who graduated from high school.   

 

 But that is precisely the point.  This was quite the casserole, and it's a miracle most of it was eaten!

Friends stayed with us overnight Sunday and all day Monday while our family processed our steer which had been getting out of the fence several times too many and was going to cost us an arm and a leg to keep feeding hay.

Anyway, by the time that huge job was mostly done, I was already exhausted and had not been able to figure out everything for supper yet for 18 people besides baked potatoes, two carrot cakes (which the little boy declared he did not like), and deviled eggs (made with mustard and relish, both of which the same boy said he did not like).

  It was coming down to the final stretch, and in  a pinch of desperation, I pulled a bag of already cooked chicken out of the freezer and put it in a pan with a little water to thaw that chicken to make into something (I wasn't sure what yet). 

Except that when I pulled it out of the bag, it looked like maybe it was turkey instead.

Or, upon looking closer, was it rabbit?

I did not have time to argue about that. 

Then I found a couple boxes of stuffing down in the basement, (both different kinds), and fluffed them with butter and hot water the way the recipe on the box said, and then mixed the meat in, plopped blobs of Velveeta cheese all over the top, and threw it all in the oven.

That is when I started praying (or maybe I was praying already). 

"Please, Lord, help this casserole!"

(I don't know if other cooks pray over their food, but this one does!)

I kept checking it, and when the blobs of cheese were half-melted, the casserole looked worse instead of better.

So I prayed again, "Please, Lord, undertake for this casserole!" I felt terrible for cutting up nice beef all afternoon, only to feed our company chicken or turkey, but when I tried to cut a piece of beef into stirfry for supper, it was too tough for my dull knife, and I was too exhausted to cut anymore.

And so the Lord just simply undertook. 

When the cheese was all melted, that casserole looked much better, and everyone was so hungry that they didn't seem to notice when I explained that I hadn't been sure if the meat was chicken, turkey, or rabbit.

(I had thought of simply calling it "Prairie Chicken Casserole," sorta like the meals I read about while skimming through this book from a friend, about the history of an area of Colorado near us, 

olden times when all they had to eat for meat was ducks and jackrabbits.

"What did she say it was?" the little boy asked his mother.

"Casserole!" his mother wisely responded, plopping a dollop of it on his plate.

He ate it, and so did everyone else!

It was delicious! It nearly disappeared!

They also ate some of everything else, and the little boy kept coming back for more deviled eggs, despite the mustard and relish in them which he had been sure he would not like!

He even liked the carrot cake which he had thought he would not like!

Thank You, Lord, for helping my casserole--and everything else!