Recently I was home with my kids during the first half of their Winter Break from school.

One of the dishes I made that week was Gourmet Mac & Cheese; as part of a recipe it instructed you finish by melting cheese to crispy on top of the casserole in the oven.

Crispy on top. Which was elevated to “crunchy” as leftovers. The kids didn’t like crunchy much.

The good news for this dad who seemed to also be (by choice) on a constant revolving process of “make a meal, clean up, do one or two other things, then make another meal…”, you get the idea…

The good news was, if I removed the crunchy from the casserole, it was otherwise sufficiently yummy for the kids to eat the leftovers.

Therein, the lesson, not just for my casserole and efforts to feed my kids several meals from one cooking effort, but maybe for life,

Sometimes if you can remove the crunchy, the rest is perfectly fine, even delicious, underneath.