The Write Ingredients

More words, recipes and the stories behind them:

Baked Big Apple French Toast

My friend and former Sporting News colleague Cindy Boren wrote this down for me on Sept. 6, 1997. How do I know that exact date? It was the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, and I was the only one who showed up for Cindy’s funeral watch party which began around 3:30 a.m. Central time. We drank Bloody Marys and ate this French Toast cassarole that I said my boys — who were 10 months and 3 at the time — would love. They did. Somewhere between Kensington Palace and Westminster Abbey, Cindy wrote this down for me. She went on to bigger and better things — Cindy writes “The Early Lead” for the Washington Post. Me? I collect recipes.

Chicken Cassarole

“Quick Colleen, I need that chicken recipe!” That was my plea sometime in the spring of 1991, when I decided I was going to cook dinner for this guy I was dating. OK, I was just starting to call him my boyfriend. At the time, I was six years removed from college living in the Georgetown apartments in south St. Louis County with my best friends in the world. And for some reason, one of them regularly cooked a stuffing-based, cheese-laden chicken breast cassarole. I don’t think we were on much of a health kick at the time. So Colleen Hagerty wrote this down for me and I went to Tom’s apartment to cook him dinner — this dinner. I figured I needed to let him know I knew my way around a kitchen. It worked. A few months later, hanging out at the Arch grounds, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It’s worked out pretty well. So has this recipe.

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