HOME COOKING

I got into a discussion on Facebook yesterday about "hot dishes".

For those of you who might not be familiar with the term, it is essentially the same as "casseroles".

In other words a meal baked in one dish in the oven.

In Minnesota, from whence the FB discussion was referred, and North Dakota, where I grew up, hot dishes were the accepted term.

When someone died, friends and neighbors would bring a prepared hot dish to the door of the bereaved to pop into the oven.

Churches would have regular hot dish dinners, otherwise known as potlucks, where the parisioners would each bring their specialty for everyone to share.

In my house, I remember tuna fish and peas, with a topping of crushed Corn Flakes cereal.

Or goulash, originally a Hungarian dish, but in my mother's iteration  it was made with ground beef and some kind of tomato sauce, maybe tomato soup from a can.

One of the other participants in the discussion added "Everything with ground beef!" And Campbell's soup!"

I think Cream of Mushroom soup was the standard binder in those many simple recipes.

It wasn't fancy but it was darned tasty, as I remember it.

All of which was coincidental to what was going on in my kitchen yesterday.

SWMBO had mentioned a few days before about using some of that leftover Easter ham and some potatoes, which we always have in the pantry, to make a meal from the long ago past: Scalloped Potatoes with Ham!

Her recipe . . and, by the way, she's from Indiana . . included a can of Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup!

It also had some grated cheddar cheese, in a nod to more modern cookery.

Here it is, fresh from the oven.

We found we no longer had the right sized glass dish so this "hot dish" was baked in a metal pan.

But the flavor was the same and I had "seconds".

Ain't nothin' wrong with home style cookin'.