Comfort food for winter

A lady named Brigid has a blog called Home on the Range that I discovered from links on the pages of some other bloggers. I've never met the lady but I like her style.
She's a woman of many parts - pilot, shooter, artist, writer and most importantly this morning, a chef. I could say that she's a cook, but that hardly captures the degree of skill she brings to the subject. The appellation 'chef' is more in keeping both with her expertise and her quality of presentation.
This morning it was cold and wet and windy in Kentucky, so I baked this as-yet-unnamed casserole for which she posted the recipe on her site.
It is really, really good!

(photo courtesy Brigid @ Home on the Range)

I can foresee that we'll be using variations on this one for some time to come. By substituting in mushrooms or other vegetables, different meats and different cheeses there would seem to be no end to the ways you could jigger this around and come up with something very nice each time.
Today we used half-n-half instead of the milk and 'country-style' bread stuffing instead of the cornbread type that she lists, but it was wonderful just the same. Delicious! Perfect for steeling you against this foul weather! The dogs and cats had mushed-up salmon in their dry food while I chowed down on the casserole and sipped coffee, and all of us are sated. Well, the dogs were paying attention while it baked and are still waiting for some of that casserole to fall off the plate onto the floor, so they're not completely sated!
The man who runs the grocery down the street from me started off as a meat cutter, and each week they make their own ground sausage right there in their store from the trimmings and cuts they've accumulated. It's so lean that you have to cook it in a little water in the skillet to keep from burning it. Next time we do this recipe, we'll try it with that sausage, some mushrooms and some onion to see what happens.
Brigid's page is full of beautiful work. Her writing and her photographs are masterful. At the risk of losing readers (all three of you), I urge you to do yourself a favor and cruise on over to her page. You might not come back to this plebeian blog again after seeing hers.
Great food! The 4th Street Irregulars give it 4 Paws up!