This recipe has a kinda long story to it... being home schooled, my family put on a Christmas play each year. With there being 10 kids, it wasn't terribly hard to have enough people to play all the characters. The problem came when there were guy characters and there were only 2 boys... and they were the youngest! So there were alot of shepherds, wise-men, inn-keepers, camel boys, Joseph's and Gabriel's that were actually girls! Anyway, we always did our play the Monday night before Christmas, so that weekend was always VERY busy baking HUNDREDS of cookies for the refreshments (like over 1000 cookies, but we only did 2 kinds), "raising the stage" (since it was so close to the ground we would manually heft it up onto 5 gallon buckets with boards on top of them so it would be higher and easier for people to see the play), setting up the hundreds of chairs, etc.
The day of the play, Grandma (who lived and still lives "the next hill over" from the farm-house) would always make this casserole for us, along with a 7-layer salad, so that we would have food to eat for lunch but not have to fix it ourselves since we really didn't have time to.
4 Cheese Pasta and Beef
8 oz. egg noodles
2 cans DelMonte chunked Pasta Style Stewed Tomatoes
1 lb. hamburger
1 cup onions
1 (3 oz) pkg. Cream Cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
1/2 cup shredded Swiss Cheese
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar Cheese
Cook pasta and drain. Cook beef and onions, add cream cheese and stir until melted. Add tomatoes.
Transfer noodles to casserole dish, add meat mixture. Top with cheeses. Cover and bake at 350° for 15 minutes. Uncover and bake 5 - 10 minutes more.
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Laura, 4, putting sprinkles on the
Vanilla Wafer Cookies, Dec. 1990
L-R:
Katie - 3, Gail - 20, Laura - 9, Rachel - 18
making program cookies, 1995
L-R:Katie - 3, Gail - 20, Laura - 9, Rachel - 18
making program cookies, 1995
Luke - 4, Katie - 6 & Lucy - 11
as shepherds. Dressed for practice,
1998
Lucy, 13 & Laura, 14
icing the cow cookies
2000
4 comments:
Hey, I know those people! And, I remember that good food! Somehow, Grandma's 4-cheese pasta casserole was better than when we made it.
Did you get those pictures from the CD we put together? I'm sure that's where they are from, but Andrew wonders if you scanned them in yourself.
The play sounds like so much fun. I didn't know you were homeschooled- it would be neat to hear more about that and your perspective it on it now. Custard powder- it is in the baking aisle in my grocery store. It comes in a can like cocoa does. I only use it for Nanaimo bars. I must have 3 or 4 tins of it as I always think I have none when I am grocery shopping for Christmas baking. They are really good- just remember to score the top before the choc gets too hard, other wise the top tends to break when you cut into them. I will have to try this pasta dish.
Sally, yes, those pictures are from your CD... I was hoping for more variety, but that was about all there was. I guess the other (like raising the stage, the program pics, cookies, etc) are probably from Mom's OLD camera and Jul's camera. We need to get those scanned onto disc's someday. Wow, that would be a major undertaking... But I had a LOT of fun looking through the disc!
just a slight correction: it was 6-gallon buckets. And those definitely are not the most flattering pictures I have seen of myself. haha!
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