FROM WHERE I SIT Hot Dish Extravaganza

FROM WHERE I SIT   Hot Dish Extravaganza     Sept. 4, 2013  Pat DeKok Spilseth

Cheese has always been a favorite delicacy of mine ever since growing up with Velveeta in the long golden box with red letters.  Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta’s golden slices on the electric stove, smothering Wonder bread whiteness with butter, frying and flipping the sandwiches in her heavy, black, cast iron frying pan.  Delicious!  Grilled cheese sandwiches were a favorite treat in our family, especially if Mom had just baked a loaf or two of her homemade bread and tucked in a few of her homemade bread and butter pickles or those chubby, pimply, dill pickles which she canned every September.  

When we felt “flush” with a bit of extra cash, Dad might purchase a bag of salty potato chips or his favorite shoestring potatoes.  The greasy, browned sandwiches would be topped off with my favorite, a tall bottle of Orange Crush pop.  Mom would add a few celery ribs and a scrubbed carrot to our plates: she had healthy instincts way back then.  When I was in grade school, those ingredients made up my favorite supper.  Naturally, when I became a teenager, Chef Boyardee pizza in the box became my new favorite.  

Fall meant church suppers with those long tables spread with various pie pieces on a plate. I got to choose only one.  What a dilemna: should I take the apple or the cherry, the lemon meriange or the pecan?  Maybe I’ll try the sour creme raisen, Mom’s favorite.  Most churches served either a chicken or roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes smothered in thick brown gravy.  A few spoonfuls of vegetables accompanied the main dish.  I preferred yellow corn nibblets rather than soggy peas or watery beans.  

Candidates for the November elections in Pope County often chose those suppers to campaign for office throughout the county.  Dad hated to campaign, but that seemed to be a necessary evil for any county office.  When he was the sheriff, he figured his record should stand for itself.  He hated catering to anybody, especially some gabby politician.  “All talk; no action” was Dad’s opinion of several guys on the county board.  He wasn’t good at glad-handing or smoothing over the rough spots of arguments.  Thank goodness he had Mom to smile and soothe some ruffled feathers.

Fall still brings out my need for warm meat and potato suppers, hot from the oven.  I loved the toasty-warm kitchen at the Pope County jail where Mom wore a bib apron as she cooked, fried and baked.  We’d sit around the gray Formica kitchen table with the stuffed gray vinyl chairs and talk about my day at school, piano lessons, the prisoners in our jail and if Mom won any pennies at her card club.  Mom enjoyed making comfort food like meat loaf stuffed with chopped white onions and dried bread cubes.  Sprinkles of dried sage gave the dish more flavor.  Another signature dish she often served was a tomato-noodle and hamburger hot dish with lots of chopped onions.  She’d add a can of Campbell’s Topmato soup and boiled elbow macaroni noodles.  My very best favorite meal was side pork.  From way upstairs in my bedroom where I’d was studying. I could smell the fat slices of pork sizzling in hot grease.  I couldn’t help myself: I had to get downstairs into the kitchen to help turn the side pork until it browned, the grease dried off, and the frying pan was ready to stir up the milk gravy.  Mmmmmm, I can still taste the crisp side pork and the chunks of white potatoes smothered in milk gravy.

MY very least favorite meal was Swiss Steak: tough chunks of meat bubbling in the cast iron skillet floated in juices of tomatoes, onions, green peppers and tomato juice.  Mom was a firm believer that meat had to be well cooked or we might get sick.  

Minnesota must be the Hot Dish capital of the world.  It’s the perfect meal to stretch the family budget.  Requiring only a little meat, hot dish recipes consisted of numerous garden vegetables, salt, pepper, a can of soup and plenty of various-shaped noodles.

Of course, wine was not used in my family.  That was reserved for communion at church and maybe a thimbleful of sweet red Mogan David wine at Christmas.  

Venison was the mainstay of our meals each winter.  Dad would go deer hunt with some buddies, have the meat cut and wrapped at the locker downtown, and the packages would be stacked in our freezer chest in the basement.  With enough garlic and onions the wild, gamey taste of venison was almost camouflaged.  The meat was always dry, well-down and very chewy.  Where I grew up, that’s the way meat was supposed to be in the Fifties and Sixties.

Sometimes Mom experiented and tried a fancy new dish like wild rice hot dish with sausage chunks.  As always, the sausage was venison, but the onions and garlic added plenty of flavor to the meal.  She might go extra wild and add soy sauce.  That seemed to add an “exotic, foreign” flavor: in my imagination I’d be transported to some exotic land where people with slanty eyes lived in bamboo houses...

Autumn’s cooler weather has invaded MInnesota.  It’s a grand time of the year to enjoy the red sumac and the burgundy and golden leaves of the maple trees.  School days have arrived along with cool days, wool blanket nights and flannel pajamas.  It’s time for cozy evenings by the fire and a comfort meal, a steaming hot dish reminding me of home. 947 words