One dish fish

You've gotta love one-dish meals. First, clean-up is easy. Second, it's easy on the brain since you're not required to think up a complete meal with complimentary side dishes. Third, you don't have to perfectly time the different components of the meal (how annoying is it when your meat is steaming hot and ready to serve, but the potatoes are still hard as rocks?).

The problem I have with most one-dish recipes is that they almost always contain cheese or cream of some sort, which means I can't serve them to my whole family. And in this same vein, many one-dish meals are also supremely unhealthy (like the zillion casserole recipes that call for "cream of something" soup).

So I thought it was too good to be true when I saw *this* recipe for Tilapia with Hash Browns in my Food Network Magazine. It had the yum factor (hash browns), the healthy factor (fish & veggies), AND it was dairy-free!

I followed the recipe exactly, except for two things. I didn't add the garlic to the hash browns, since I was going to serve it to my semi-garlic-averse kids. And I only used a little bit of chopped olives because I pretty much hate olives. Get this - I really wish I had used more olives because the olives were my favorite part about the dish! I used manzanillo olives, and they were fantastic - they added a nice briny freshness to the dish, and as I was eating it I kept cursing myself for not putting in the full amount. So next time I'll know...

My girls ate at least 1/2 to 3/4 of the serving I gave them, which was more than I was banking on. I don't know if I would label it as kid-friendly for the 4 and under set, but older children should like it for sure. I mean, it has hash browns in it! And I recommend over-browning the hash browns a little bit to make them extra crispy.