Cheesy Hashbrown Casserole

I have died and gone to comfort food heaven!  I was squeaking in under the wire with this month's new recipe (#73).  This stems from a recipe that my dad's wife makes.  She is a great cook, and her version of this casserole is a favorite of her kids, too.  I have never quite been able to get the whole recipe out of her, but I think that's more because she doesn't follow an actual recipe than her trying to keep it a secret or anything like that.  So I ended up doing a Google search (seriously, what did we do before the internet???) and found, literally, thousands of recipes with an inifinite number of variations.  I've actually had the ingredients for this for a while now and had originally intended to include ham in it to make it more of a main course, but I had a ham that needed to be cooked anyway, so I ended up doing that separately (more on that in a minute).  I have to admit that I definitely went cheese-heavy on this, but basically it's a mix of sharp cheddar, greek yogurt, cream of potato soup, frozen hash browns, salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning, topped with parmesan and asiago.  Healthy, this is not.  It baked for over an hour, and merged into a perfect blend of cheesy potato goodness!  You can't really taste the cajun seasoning, but it gives it a slight kick and keeps it from being too one-note flavor-wise.  I just finished off a bowlful and it was beyond tasty, but I do have to admit a craving for some sort of green vegetable now.  *LOL*

(this picture is for you, Mashelda!)

Now for the ham.  It was cooked on the stove in a pot with an onion and a two-liter of Coke, a la Nigella Lawson.  I have fixed this once before, but I wanted to mention it anyway because it is so easy and so tasty!  Last time I took it to work for a carry-in, and everyone raved over it.  I love that by cooking it on the stove, it frees up the oven for whatever else you are fixing to go along with it.  And the Coke/onion can be reduced down to make a glaze if you like to do that.

So now, between the casserole and the ham and some frozen veggies, I have meals for the week.  Yummy!