Cheesy Egg Bake

Back to the 1971 Good Food on a Budget again. Here is a description of this picture:

"Cheesy Egg Bake provides one-step cooking at its finest. The Swiss cheese and chicken-sauced eggs bake as the ring of French bread slices toasts. Parsley is sprinkled on top before serving this brunch treasure."

Now, had I been using this book to actually cook, I would have stopped at 'chicken-sauced eggs.'

"Mustard adds zip" (oh boy)

1 10 1/2 oz. can condensed cream of chicken soup

1/4 cup reconstituted nonfat dry milk

2 teaspoons grated onion

1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard

4 oz. process Swiss cheese, shredded (1 cup) (Process Swiss cheese? Why?)

6 eggs (uhoh)

6 1/2 inch thick slices French Bread, buttered and halved

Snipped parsley

In saucepan combine first 4 ingredients; cook and stir till heated through. Remove from heat; stir in cheese till melted. Pour 1 cup sauce into 10X6X1 3/4 inch baking dish. (That's pretty specific. What if you are off by 1/2 inch?) Break eggs atop sauce. Spoon remaining sauce around eggs. Stand bread around baking dish edges, crust up. Bake at 350 till eggs are set, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley. Serves 6.

I'd love to see how this one is served neatly. Why wouldn't people just poach some eggs, make some toast and sprinkle cheese on top of it all? The chicken stock is a bit weird, but at least this recipe has no prunes. There was a Prune Orange dish in this book, but I decided to give all readers a prune break, at least for a couple days.

A good friend asked what cookbook all my crazy prune recipes are from. Sadly, every one of my cookbooks has a crazy prune recipe. Certain trends emerge over and over in the vintage books, and the prune recipes is the trend I see most often.

I'm reading Deb Baker's doll mystery series - excellent. Really interesting - a whole world I know nothing about. Deb is on a panel with me for Love is Murder.

For the first time in eight years, I did not have to attend ALA's Midwinter conference. This year it is in Denver, and I did participate in a meeting by phone on Saturday morning, which was kind of fun. I finished the call, feeling a bit left out, when the phone rang again. It was Jana Fine, a great YA librarian who is a Past President of YALSA. She is the chair of the Henne/YALSA/VOYA research grant. Marc Aronson, award winning author and friend, and I have won this grant for 2009. We turned in a proposal a couple months ago about studying nonfiction reading preferences of teens. We will be working with 9 librarians in schools and public libraries all over the country for the first part of the three part study to host book discussion groups with their teens. We then have two other survey components, one for teens and one for library staff and teachers. Then we have to publish a paper. I am very very excited about this. I received this grant 6 years ago with my good friend and colleague Nick Buron from the Queens Library and we spend eighteen months looking at how libraries empower staff to welcome teens. I learned so much from that. I look forward to the discoveries of this project too. Now if only I could find a research grant about cookbooks. I'd be in heaven!