This recipe is quick and easy to throw together and serves as a wonderful side dish but the versatility allows you to use leftovers to turn this into a main entree! The fun thing about it though is that you can make several ahead of time and freeze them to use in a jiffy at a later date. Reheating may then be done either in the oven or microwave, so this is a win-win either way you look at it.
Back when we had people over for dinner on a regular basis, this was a go-to dish for me that I served just about every time. It was a great way to round out the meal without taking any additional prep time and they always got rave reviews. I don’t get to have folks over nearly as often these days, much to my dismay. With the kids getting older and having activities of their own amidst our every quickening schedules, our focus has turned to making sure we get to spend our quality time together as a family.
Things sure were different when I was little though! It’s amazing but almost every memory I have of our dinner table growing up includes my mother, father, sister, brother, and at least one or two “extras.” No matter how tight our grocery budget or schedule was, Mama always found time and managed to feed more.
Usually it was a rookie police officer my dad was training; they were riding around in the patrol car so if Daddy was to come home for supper we couldn’t hardly not feed them as well. Sometimes it was a random uncle or bachelor friend of the family and as we got older our friends also clamored into the mix as they got to see that a full supper at our house wasn’t a special occasion but a daily event. There were two kids (well, they were teens at the time) who took to eating at our house and literally ate supper with us every single night for about two years. Mama and Daddy always said that if anything ever happened to them, they hoped someone would do the same for us.
