Thrift Week 2018, Day Five: Cheesy Rice Casserole

On the fifth day of Thrift Week, my husband made for me...a casserole that's been a staple meal of ours since we discovered it in the pages of Peg Bracken's iconic I Hate to Cook Book. This book is over 50 years old, and it's consequently somewhat dated in both its social and culinary mores; nonetheless, it's the only cookbook I regularly reread for sheer entertainment. Peg Bracken's approach to cooking is to get it over with as painlessly as possible, and she intersperses the recipes with lots of amusing little tips and anecdotes about how to do it. For instance, in the "Last-Minute Suppers" section, she features a recipe she calls "Ragtime Tuna" (which is nothing but layers of canned tuna and canned mac-and-cheese, topped with extra cheese and baked) with the note: "You won't believe this, but I first tasted this dish at an extremely fancy buffet, knee deep in baby brown orchids. This dish is probably why they could afford the baby brown orchids. Anyway, the hostess told me how she did it, and to keep it to myself, which proves you can't trust anybody these days."

This particular casserole comes from the last chapter, "Good Cooksmanship," in which Bracken notes the importance of having a Specialty. In the event that you someday "wake up and find yourself a celebrity," she assures readers, your Kitchen Specialty will be the second thing the reporters ask you for. (The first, apparently, is your measurements. I told you the book was dated.) For those who don't happen to have a specialty already, Bracken offers up several ready-made recipes that are suitable for the purpose. The last of these, which she calls "Hellzapoppin' Cheese Rice," is a favorite with us because it's easy to make and doesn't call for anything we don't habitually have in the house. Bracken says it's "good by itself and tremendous with barbecued steak, chicken, or chops," but we've never seen any need to add anything to it; with protein, veggies, and grain all in one dish, it makes a perfectly good stand-alone meal.

Since we first tried it, we've made a couple of changes to Bracken's original recipe. The first was the cutesy name, which we shortened to "Cheesy Rice Casserole" because it sounds less, well, cheesy. The second was the proportions. Brian's version makes a slightly smaller batch than Bracken's original—about 3/4 of the recipe, which is enough for a dinner and a couple of lunches—and he has cut down both the butter and the cheese to make it lighter. So our version, which I deem different enough from the original to publish here, looks like this:

Cheesy Rice Casserole 

Beat 3 eggs until light, then add 3/4 c. milk, 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp. salt, 1 pinch dried thyme, 1 pinch dried marjoram, and 1/2 onion, chopped fine. Fold in 1/2 pound chopped, cooked frozen spinach, 1/3 pound grated sharp cheddar, and 3 cups cooked rice, and pour it all into a greased casserole dish. Melt 2 Tbsp. butter and pour over top. Bake at 375°F for about half an hour.

We made this dish on the first day of our Reverse SNAP Challenge in 2014, and at that time I calculated its cost at $3.30. Checking over my price book now, I find this is still about accurate. The priciest ingredients are the cheese (about $3 a pound on sale), spinach ($1.99 a pound for the organic stuff from Trader Joe's) and eggs (we last paid $3 a dozen for organic, Certified Humane eggs at H-Mart). If you made do with conventional spinach and eggs, it would shave about a dollar from the price.

Tonight, we ate about half this casserole, leaving the rest for lunches, so I'm estimating we get about 4 servings out of it. That makes the cost per serving about 83 cents, which is more than the other recipes we've featured during Thrift Week, but still thrifty by any reasonable standard.