Sunday Dinner: Ham and Copycat Cracker Barrel Hashbrown Casserole

Updated 3/5/20

Oh, how I love Sundays!

On the mornings when I’m on the worship team, I arrive early and get to hang out with some of my very favorite people on earth while we go through the morning’s worship set. Then people start showing up, and the hugging begins, along with the questions you ask people you haven’t seen in three long days, or seven. “How was your week?” and “How did that job interview go?” and “How is your friend we’ve been praying for?”

Then we worship together, in an intimate, candle-lit downstairs room barely big enough for our growing church family, and when Dave takes the podium and says, “Would you turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 4,” the room explodes with the noise of page-swishing, as Bibles open and pens are clicked and heads raise, waiting for the spiritual food to come. Can I just say again how grateful I am to be in a church that teaches verse-by-verse through the Scriptures, and that values God’s Word above everything else? Because I am.

We linger afterward. Sometimes there are tears, as God has had His way with a heart, and gentle conviction has turned to surrender, and that one walks out with a fresh start and a clean slate and a determination to belong more fully to Him in the week to come. There’s always, always, always laughter here … and plenty of it. We are a joyful bunch.

We may have a meeting, or we may scatter to our own homes, or we may gather in small groups and carry on fellowship in little clusters all around Marysville … lovely little sparkles of light, like fireflies lighting up a dark sky.

I so love these people.

(I’ve really typed myself into a corner here. How am I suppose to transition from all that to a recipe? Thinking … thinking … )

So … it’s pretty hard to drive away sometimes, but I find it takes the sting out of things if I know there’s something delicious waiting for us at home in the crock pot. This week, I popped a ham shoulder roast in just before leaving for church. I’d planned to make scalloped potatoes to go along with it, but ran out of time. But no worries. When you don’t have five hours for scalloped potatoes, there’s a quicker alternative:

Copycat Cracker Barrel Hashbrown Casserole

• 2 lbs frozen shredded hash browns (my bag was 30 oz)
• 1 small onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pint sour cream
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 cups cheddar cheese

Thaw the hash browns and place in a large mixing bowl.

In a frying pan, saute the onions in a little olive oil for ten minutes. Add minced garlic and cook another three minutes.

In a smaller bowl, mix the sour cream, butter, chicken soup, salt and pepper. Mix well, then add the cooked onions and cheese. Pour into larger bowl with the has browns and stir well.

Coat a 9 x 13 baking pan with butter or olive oil. Pour casserole into dish and smooth.

Bake 1 hour at 350 or until cooked through and bubbly.

Here’s a blurry picture of a bite. (This is what happens when you squint at Instagram instead of taking two minutes to find your glasses)

And to go along with all that Sunday-dinner-goodness, here’s one of the worship songs we sang today: