I'm a little slow in getting to my Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog only to discover that one can purchase green bean casserole there for the princely sum of $62 plus $14.50 for shipping. For $14.50, couldn't one buy the ingredients to make this casserole for like...50 people or so?

GBC at N-M

Maybe someone should order them for the next ST GTG!

But the green beans have been hand selected by Stanley Marcus...

M

4 1/2 pounds is eight servings? That's over half a pound of beans per serving!

Maybe there are gold flakes sprinkled on the top.

You'd think that by now, they'd have slapped a 50% off sticker on those beans. Don't know if the shipping weight is 4 1/2 pounds or if that's the net weight, but 1/2 # per person is a lot. I know Katrina has affected the price of green beans but I don't think to this extent!

I just discovered, via lovely Google, that the ingredients in the potatoes that my in-laws served on Christmas Day lead up to a recipe for "funeral potatoes" - first time I'd ever had these, wouldn't recommend them, but interesting history in that their origins are allegedly Mormon.

Well, I couldn't resist googling THAT!!

I grew up in a community that was mostly Mormon, and I remember those potatoes. Google also led me to this blog discussion, which is pretty funny.

Fixed link

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Marta,

I just had to check out that page. That is pretty funny.

That site was hilarious! I'd seen the potato part of it when I first googled the ingredients but didn't pay the rest any heed. My MIL is one for jello - on Thanksgiving, we always have lime jello with fruit cocktail (seedless grapes removed), whipped with cream cheese before the jello sets, and then topped with cool whip and chopped nuts.

I looked through both of my White Trash cookbooks plus the "Bad for You Cookbook", and there is no potato recipe that comes close to funeral potatoes.

Kind of makes me ironically mournful in a way, the funeral potatoes - one of the recipes I was so proud to master when I first learned to cook was a white sauce. Then to add lovely grated sharp Tillamook to the sauce and fold it around parboiled potato slices, top with more cheese, and slide it in the oven? This plus prime rib was the standard Christmas meal for my family for about a decade.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris:
I grew up in a community that was mostly Mormon, and I remember those potatoes. Google also led me to this blog discussion, which is pretty funny.

Fixed link

Chris, want to tell you that after reading that MakingLight article and posts, (a) I nearly died laughing and (b) immediately emailed the link to a friend with apologies for thinking that she had made up the stories about jello salads at family events (in Nebraska I think) or that she came from a family of jello deviants. She stands vindicated! I have her mother-in-law's recipe for potatoes that I now realize are a variant on Funeral Potatoes.