The Beauty of the Casserole

The beauty of the casserole, as anyone knows who has anything to do with preparing and then consuming this delectable proletarian dish, is that it is completely democratic. A fine casserole can be made with any kind of vegetable, any kind of meat, any kind of liquid, and in any kind of vessel that will not start on fire in a moderate oven. It accepts leftovers of every color, creed, and age. It never balks at new ingredients, either -- although it is rarely indulged in them. A casserole (often called a 'hotdish' down in the holds of a Lutheran church basement) cares not what it may be covered with -- bread crumbs, shredded cheese, barbecue sauce, crushed cornflakes; it can even be inundated with pints of inexpensive tomato ketchup and still turn out to be a deeply moving culinary experience.

 A mainstay of the so-called 'flyover country,' the casserole is nearly extinct on the East Coast and the West Coast -- where it is viewed with snobbish amusement and disdain by people who must have their pate and crudites served up on electrum platters to tickle their pettish palates. Such high and mighty folk have no use for good old American stodge, the kind of starch and carbohydrate-saturated dish that fueled the likes of Charles Lindbergh, Hamlin Garland, and Harold Stassen. A slice of rich, thick casserole, with some coleslaw or frog eye salad on the side, is the god-given right of every American man, woman, and child. Those who rail against this Midwestern manna are to be pitied, for they will never know the satisfaction of sitting back to watch their waistline surge a full inch and a half after a hearty helping of ham and potato casserole.  

My mother was a dab hand at whipping up a casserole for dinner on a sullen winter's night, something that would stick to your ribs so long that I believe I still have some savory remnants clinging to my twelfth thoracic vertebrae to this very day. I have detailed elsewhere her repulsive habit of profaning our meals by stirring tuna fish into an otherwise perfectly good casserole dish -- but otherwise her casseroles were noble works of gooey bubbling art.

As my own family came along, I developed the knack of making an improvised casserole at the drop of a soup can. My wife Amy, who eventually graced our home with eight children, was often indisposed or simply too tired to cook, and so I would fearlessly step into the breach to concoct a large and tasty casserole (with NO tuna) to satisfy the ravening tribe of savages that gathered around the dinner table each evening. The secret, I quickly learned, was to make sure to include enough glue. Not epoxy or rubber cement, but Campbell's cream of chicken. This sovereign ingredient would bind together the most disparate and desperate food groups in a large ceramic dish and make it all come out palatable enough to engage the attention of my so-called children -- fidgety hoodlums who would just as soon roll you for your poke as eat anything that looked or tasted remotely good for them.   

And even better, a large casserole, served with a loaf or two from the Wonder Day Old Bread Store, was just what the doctor ordered for our Church missionaries -- young men from Utah and Idaho who were fighting chilblains and indifference as they went door to door during the Minnesota winter to spread the story of Joseph Smith. I had done the same thing in Thailand years before, so I empathized with them when they expressed discouragement and homesickness. I invited them over to our home at least once a week. Once they tucked into a steaming casserole, with a stack of buttered bread slices by their sides, their stomachs overthrew their melancholy dispositions and they would cheerfully ask for second helpings, and even thirds, while making a joyful noise. Missionaries in the Church, like Napoleon's soldiers, march on their bellies. 

Have I mentioned that it is impossible for a well-prepared casserole to ever go bad in the refrigerator? As impossible as a Twinkie going stale. When times were tough, I would throw together several monster casseroles at once, using up all the canned goods and dropsical produce I could find, and our family lived just fine on them until the wolf slunk away from the door and went back to waiting patiently on the curb. 

Nowadays the only casserole dish I get is funeral potatoes, a hash brown thingy they serve at Church wakes. It tastes pretty good -- but I suspect today's homemakers eschew the Campbell's cream of chicken soup and use Greek yogurt. So I always bring along a bottle of Elmer's Glue to surreptitiously squeeze onto my helping -- it gives the funeral potatoes a nostalgic little zing for me . . .