Satisfying Everyone at Dinner {exclusive recipe}

Over the past few weeks I’ve made the case that men are easier fed than understood. Feeding men is generally a fairly easy task, but it becomes more difficult when you’re trying to offer them a variety of foods. While it may seem simple enough to some, creating a meal plan that includes a variety can be difficult for me. My husband (Tom) will say that he will eat anything except for cooked carrots and that is true. What he won’t say is that while he may eat almost anything, that doesn’t mean that he won’t complain about the foods that he doesn’t truly care for. Guess who gets to hear all those complaints? Me!

I have a list of foods that the four of us all enjoy and that list isn’t very lengthy. My sons are both picky eaters and if you ask Tom, they get that from me. He and I were raised very differently. When Tom was a child his mother cooked huge, four course meals every night at dinner and he was expected to eat everything on his plate. I was raised by a single mother and sometimes our meals consisted of three different cans of vegetables because that’s all she could afford. I was never made to clean my plate but I was expected to at least try everything that she cooked. So as you can imagine, Tom and I often disagree about how things should go at the dinner table.

In an effort to make everyone happy and avoid disagreements, I try to find recipes that include foods that everyone enjoys. It can be a challenge because there are very few veggies that we all like and I hate to spend hours in the kitchen making dinner. I have gotten pretty good at altering recipes to fit our tastes and over the years I have even created some recipes of my own. One food that we all enjoy is Ball Park hot dogs so this week I decided to come up with a new way to incorporate them into a dinner meal. I did some recipe searching online and found that most people do chili dogs (like we normally do) or they BBQ their hot dogs which is great, but not what I had in mind. I found a casserole recipe that seemed interesting but it had celery and a few other things we don’t eat in it, so I decided to revamp it to fit our tastes.

Andrea’s Corn Dog Casserole

 

Ingredients -

-2 packages Ball Park Beef Franks

-2 boxes cornbread mix (I use Jiffy brand)

-2 eggs

-1 1/2 cup 2% milk

-1 can of bean and bacon soup (do not add water)

-3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

-2 tablespoons each – brown sugar, ketchup and BBQ sauce

-1/4 teaspoon each – garlic powder, onion powder and pepper

Directions -

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Slice hot dogs into thirds. Then slice each third into fourths. This can be a bit tricky but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just chunk up the hot dogs real good and it will be fine.
3. Put the hot dogs in a skillet and brown them a bit on each side.
4. Mix in the soup, brown sugar, ketchup and BBQ sauce. Heat on medium for about 5 minutes stirring frequently.
5. In a large bowl mix together the cornbread mix, eggs, milk, spices and 2 cups of the shredded cheese. You can add some salt to the mixture if you’d like. I didn’t add any and it tasted fine.
6. Add the hot dog mixture to the cornbread mixture and stir together.
7. Pour the mixture into a shallow, 3 quart baking dish. I used a glass dish and it worked well.
8. Bake at 400 for 25 minutes or until the edges start to brown.
9. Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of shredded cheddar on top and put back into the oven for 5 minutes or until the cheese is melted.
10. Let cool for about 5 minutes and enjoy!

The corn dog casserole really does taste like a corn dog that you’d get at the fair. My husband and sons loved it and my oldest son said he’d give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. The recipe made enough for our dinner and lunch the next day. I would say it is about 8 servings in total.

I know the recipe doesn’t include any veggies but you could always add them in if you want to experiment, or you could serve them on the side. I think some cooked and crumbled bacon would also be a nice addition to the casserole too!

This recipe will now be on my monthly menu along with my usual menu items of Ball Park chili dogs, tacos, spaghetti, chicken noodles and breakfast for dinner. What kinds of things are on your dinner menu? Do you have any special recipes that are a favorite among the guys in your house?

This is a sponsored post.  Ball Park product and additional incentives were provided to me.  All opinions stated are my own as is this recipe.