Pre-Blogging Free Write (P)

One of the main reasons that I learned to cook in the first place is that my mother is a terrible cook. Her standard mode of operation when it came to making food was the casserole. I suspect she did this because it didn't require her to be creative in regard to preparation--just cut everything up, mix it up in some noodles, throw a can of cream of mushroom soup over the top, and bake it for an hour. Her devotion to the casserole format is legendary amongst my siblings and me. In a sense, she was more creative than she thought, since there was seemingly no limit to the ingredient list. Anything could be turned into a casserole.

I always thought the casserole was a universal dish, but since moving out of Minnesota fifteen years ago, I've learned that most people didn't eat it five nights a week. Often the original casserole would be prepared on a Monday, with a new ingredient added to the leftovers each day to "improve the flavor", so that by Friday, it had merged into some sort of gray almagamation of whatever happened to be in the refrigerator. At the beginning of the week, the casserole would be somewhat palatable, and each ingredient would have its own identifiable taste. By the end of its life, it would take on a sort of muddy everyfood flavor, much like I imagine eating the remnants of a garbage disposal would taste.

When I was about fifteen, I began to experiment with cooking, and serving what I had made with my family. Since our meals had basically been limited to casseroles and whatever my father could barbeque, this trend of eating food without pasta or scorch marks, quickly caught on in my family, and I became the primary chef for the household. Eighteen years after my first cooking experience, I still have yet to make a casserole.