24 Comments

A have a beer hotdish that I make every day around 6 PM.

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The classic Midwestern covered dish involves a baking dish of frozen green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and a crunchy crust. Those are the staples, but you can then add any prepackaged food product you wish and/or ground meat.

Depending on your school of thought, the crunchy crust must be made of crumbled up potato chips, corn flakes, or those canned fried onions, although I'm intrigued to see that in Minnesota tater tots seem to be the cruster of choice. Minnesota! Land of Innovation!

Garrison Keillor's one good line was his comment that cream of mushroom soup is the glue that holds Midwestern society together.

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Clearly you are not from the Midwest.

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All of the hotdishes were above average.

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Wait a minute. Swedes celebrate Sytennde Mai?

Oh, I suppose it's like the Brits celebrating July 4. Nevermind.

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I think the casserole fetish comes from pre-global-shipping winters, when pretty much all you had to work with was leftovers and maybe some more-or-less fresh meat.

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People were generous with the tips?

Thank you. Try the veal. I'll be here .. actuallly, I'll be here forever.

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That's just the alcohol at work.

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My mother tried that once ... probably suckered by an "easy family recipe" promoted by Campbell's. (They had just started plugging cream of mushroom as a kitchen essential with a thousand uses.) We hadn't known those canned onion things even existed - and I'm still not sure why they do, unless it's specifically for green bean casseroles.

My dad's evaluation is timeless: "It tastes as good as it looks."

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What? My dog loved the stuff. Maybe he was fooled by the label, which in his case said "dog food".

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Tell me again about that whole "soaking in lye" business...

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The irony is unintentional - and invisible to his fans.

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Is there any canned food that <i>doesn't</i> have a brand name? Well, there you go.

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It's the only thing that keeps Franken from wringing Bachmann's neck. I'm not sure if that qualifies as a joke.

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The cosmic mystery that surrounds the daily hotdish casserole: <i>where do the leftovers come from?</i>

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I can't believe Bachmann doesn't have a corndog recipe.

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