Trump Card Casserole

My Mom is a school teacher.  And for me as a person who works year round and has little patience for stranger's children, by far the most appealing part of that profession in my opinion is the summers off ;-)  Oddly enough, that is the thorn in my Mother's side.  Although she always welcomes the break from the school year come late May, she is normally going stir crazy two weeks in to her summer break.  She doesn't sit well and after the first few weeks of furiously working her way through stacks of novels as tall as she is, she is normally ready to pull her hair out.  So she basically plays tourist in her own city for the rest of the summer months.  She and one of her other teacher friends attend every NOMA art exhibit, take every French Quarter tour and dine at several local restuarants to keep busy during the days.

On one of her French Quarter excursions she picked up a very "souvenirish" gift for me, but something so neat that I was ecstatic to be the recipient.  It was a deck of playing cards called "Deck 'o Meals, 52 Creole recipes".  The deck of cards had more to offer than just 52 classic creole recipes, the recipes had to fit on one side of a standard playing card so they were all very easy recipes with few ingredients.  I quickly thumbed through them and decided I would be making several of them very soon.  The first one I chose was this zucchini casserole.  I wanted to add it as a side for a weeknight meal, but this was so good that I immediately deemed it Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner worthy.  I made a few changes in the preparation of the recipe, but stuck with the original ingredient list and it was AMAZING!


Zucchini Casserole
Loosely adapted from Creole "Deck 'o Meals" Playing Cards

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bacon, cut up
• 8 oz white button mushrooms, chopped
• 1/2 cup diced yellow onions
• dash of garlic salt
• 3 medium zucchini, grated
• 1 1/2 cup cracker crumbs (Saltines)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2/3 cup Monterey Jack Cheese, shredded
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preparation:

1.  Partly cook bacon slices.  Remove from pan and place aside in large mixing bowl.



 Drain all but 1 Tbs of bacon grease from pan.  Cook the onions and mushrooms in the remaining bacon grease.



2.  Add cooked mushrooms and onions to the bacon.  Combine the remaining ingredients.



Adding cracker crumbs and eggs last.



3.  Bake in a 2 quart casserole dish, un-covered for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.



Click Here for My Printable Recipe