Broccoli Bake

Having trouble getting your kiddos to eat their veggies?  I have the solution!  Lol.  This is an old family recipe of ours, which I suppose I could say is a secret recipe....but I honestly can't imagine that there aren't millions of people all over the country making the same or a very similar dish.  It's very, very easy, but also quite unhealthy and deadly (you'll see), so we reserve it for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It really wouldn't be good (on your waistline, I mean) to eat this more than a couple times a year.  But it's uber-delicious.

Gather your ingredients:

• Frozen broccoli (you could use fresh, but you'd have to peel the stalks and then cook it before even starting this recipe; frozen is already prepped and pre-cooked and therefore ready to go)
• Town House crackers
• Cheese (we just grab cheese ends from the deli, it really doesn't matter what kind)
• Butter
• Non-stick spray

That's it.  Easy peasy.

Chop up the cheese and layer it in your baking dishe(s) with the broccoli....broccoli first, then cheese, then broccoli, then cheese and so forth until the pan(s) are full, but always finishing with cheese on top.

Crush up some crackers in a plastic bag (for this iteration of the recipe, I ended up using one sleeve of crackers per pan).

Cover each pan with a flat layer crushed crackers.

Melt some butter (I simply put it in a measuring cup in the microwave), and pour it over the top.  As if the all the cheese already in there wasn't unhealthy enough, I used 2 full sticks of butter for each pan.  I tried to do a pan with only 1 stick, but the crackers just didn't soak up enough to bake properly.  Trust me.  ;)

Pop it into a 350-degree oven and bake it uncovered until it's bubbly and GB&D (that's golden brown and delicious).  It took about an hour.

Allow it to cool for a few minutes before serving (it needs time for the cheese and butter to firm back up slightly, otherwise you will have a lot of liquid going on in the bottom of the pan).

Eat it and enjoy the hell out of it, but don't dare ask about nutritional content.  We can't count that high.  :)