On Saturday, Derek was complaining of fatigue, and just feeling kinda off. Saturday is our big house cleaning day, where everybody does their big chores so the house can be nice and neat and ready for destroying through the next six days, and he wasn't feeling particularly up for that. So instead we ran errands. Not a great alternative when someone isn't feeling their best, really, but here we are.
Sunday, Derek comes down with muscle aches. Not tooooo serious, but enough that he pretty much stayed in bed through the day, and the plans we had for our anniversary fell through. Derek had a lovely day planned for us...a nice dinner that we'd make together, getting into our new 2,000 piece puzzle that we haven't had time for yet, and taking a tub, having a drink, and doing a crossword puzzle (which is our favorite way to unwind and connect, we do it all the time. Jetted tub + whatever boozy drink we choose + NYT Sunday crossword puzzle = how we keep the fires burning). We did not a stitch of that, he laid in bed all day, and I sat in the living room, quietly resenting him.
On Monday, Derek was full blown ill. Obvious chills, muscle aches bad enough that he was moaning all day. I was starting to get worried that maybe he had covid. Derek still mostly wears his mask, but I know when he's teaching, he's a lot more cavalier, so who knows what germs he's partying with on his on weeks. I told Derek I thought maybe he had covid, and he laughed it off (as best as he could, given that he's been a joyless puddle since Saturday) and said he had a run of the mill cold. I made him take a covid test, it was negative, and he went back to his holding pattern of whining, sleeping, and shivering.
Tuesday night, he has not improved. I made him take another covid test, because muscle aches and chills and slightly off tummy are pretty current through all of the cases of people I know who've had covid. Derek is still very insistent he doesn't have covid, but I am relentless about him taking a test. A couple of my girlfriends have had negative tests when they knew they had covid, as well, so I took Derek's crowing about his negative tests with a large grain of salt. Tuesday evening rolls around, and Derek is feeling worse than he's felt in days. He makes a rare exit from his moaning cocoon in bed to go to the bathroom, and as I was sitting in the room working on a paper, I heard him make the frustration noise in the bathroom.
me: Is everything ok, honey? Can I help you with something?
Derek: You can't help me with this.
me: What is this?
Derek: I'm just having extreme difficulty peeing.
me:....uh. Maybe we should go to the doctor.
Derek: nah, it's been going on since Saturday.
me: .....what.
Derek: It's just my prostate stuff, I doubled my meds, it'll get better.
me: Derek. Are you kidding? Scale of 1-10, how extreme is your difficulty in peeing?
Derek: Extreme.
me: we're going to the fucking ER. This is why ciswomen live longer than cismen.
Derek: Why? It's fine.
me: Uh, no. Why didn't you tell me this days ago? If you had told me days ago that you had trouble peeing, I wouldn't have thought you had covid, I would have known IMMEDIATELY you had some kind of bladder infection or a severe UTI that was turning into a bladder infection. Or maybe you have a kidney stone. But whatever it is, get dressed, we're going to the ER.
So we went to the ER. And after a few hours, some bloodwork, and one negative covid test later, we find out that Derek DID have a bladder infection. A very severe bladder infection that was moving into his kidneys. And he was severely dehydrated. So they gave Derek two IV bags of fluid, one IV bag of antibiotics, and sent him home with a week long course of antibiotics to treat his infection, and a fuckton of pain medication.
It is Friday now, and yesterday Derek had his first day getting out of bed. I hadn't slept in the room in days, because he had been sweating in his pain cocoon, and the room smelled deeply unpleasant. But yesterday he took a shower, we washed the sheets, the comforter, everything. The room smells like a room again, and Derek smells like a person again, and things are mostly right with the world. He's functioning at about 60%, which is so much better than he's been since Sunday.
I may have made this clear in here, but I just fucking LOVE to cook for people. If you're feeling down, I want to cook for you. If you're happy, I want to cook to celebrate. If you're feeling ill, I want to make your favorite comfort food. A few months ago, when Derek had his last procedure, I asked him what he wanted to eat during his convalescence, and he was like, I want hot fill.
What the fuck is hot fill.
I had no idea. I had never heard the term. So I messaged my mother in law and got a recipe for the dish Derek was talking about.
Oh, I remember thinking to myself. It's a casserole. A midwestern casserole.
Fast forward to Thursday night, I wanted to make Derek something hot, filling, and midwestern adjacent. Those are his roots, baby! He's from Indiana, so he grew up around all manner of things that are legally considered food, but in reality have no respect or decency for the people that consume them.
Rewind to when I was 14: my great grandfather had passed away, and I went to Ithaca for his funeral. As is customary when someone loses their spouse, my great grandmother's rotary club friends all brought over their finest one pot dishes for my grandmother to freeze, refrigerate, and eat at her leisure, ensuring she didn't have to bother herself with cooking. One of those meals was a casserole.
Casserole is what we call hot fill...which is actually called hot dish...in New York. And I think most people understand this as a casserole. It's a one pan meal you bake in the oven, comprised of a mish mash of ingredients that are just...rude. When I looked up hot dish to see what the difference between hot dish and casserole was, I was informed by a great many blogs from midwestern folk that CASSEROLE is the vessel in which a HOT DISH is served. So to midwesterners, casserole is just an empty hole, waiting patiently to be filled with hot dish. Casserole is not a dish you eat, it's a thing you serve your midwestern slop bucket innards in.
Fast forward to when I was 16-17: I went back to Ithaca to care for my great grandmother, and I decided I wanted that casserole for us. It was easy, it made a lot, and I could just reheat it for a few days and not have to worry about making new stuff. Now, I was never given the recipe for this casserole. I don't even know which one of my grandmother's friends had made it so I could ask for the recipe. So I had to figure it out from memory. I had to ask my great grandmother about what the base to a casserole usually was, and she told me, I was appropriately icked out, but I forged ahead, recalling the other ingredients, and then...just...shoving them into a pan, baking them, and waiting to eat it to see if it was close to the original.
Whether or not it was close to the original from several years before I cannot say. What I CAN say was the mess I had made was absolutely fucking DELICIOUS. I cared for my grandmother for a month before I ended up leaving and going back to Vegas...I think we ate this casserole...er...hot dish....50% of the time I was there. I brought this dish with me when I returned from New York. In Vegas, my dad wasn't really around, so I pretty much had license to do whatever the fuck it was that I wanted to do, and it also meant I didn't have someone cooking for me a lot, so I had to fend for myself. I turned to this casserole a LOT. I'm sorry, midwesterners. I know I'm meant to call it a hot dish, but I really am struggling with the change. If I osscilate between hot dish and casserole, I think you all know I'm not saying that we were eating our pyrex serving dish. Anyway, I made this hot dish a lot. Steffie and I ate it constantly. When I got pregnant with Rhyann, and I was living in California and Steffie came out to visit me a few times, each time she came we made my chicken casserole. My chicken hot dish. My chicken abomination that shouldn't be delicious, but is.
Back to present day...well...back to present week, circa Wednesday. I wanted to make a new hot dish casserole for my Midwestern husband. My poor, suffering midwestern husband. So I texted Steffie, asking if she still had the recipe for this casserole, did she remember it at all? And I absolutely LOVED hearing that Steffie has, in fact, been making this hot dish casserole for her family for years. It's not necessarily a staple, but it is common enough that she rattled off the recipe, telling me she had changed it a lot over the years and didn't remember my original version, but I was welcome to try her version of it.
When I say delighted, I mean it. I was thrilled to my very fingertips that this disgusting lie of a meal had made its way into the food repertoire of one of my best friends. Because...this dish is truly my Frankenstein's Monster. I scrapped it together from hideous details, stapled them together and hoped for the best. I emulated something that I ate ONCE when I was 13, surrounded by grief, and look at this absolutely ridiculous path my food mess has taken! Twenty years later, it's a common family meal for a dear friend, and I was also about to embark on making it again. I was filled with warmth at the thought of this, which may sound silly, but I don't particularly mind sounding silly over this.
Because that warmth and glee had to do a lot...and I mean a LOT...of heavy lifting to muscle through the absolute fucking disgust and revulsion I felt buying up all of the ingredients to make this monstrosity. I am going to share the recipe, for two reasons:
Reason 1: I do not want to forget it ever again. Steffie's recipe was fine, and it was close enough to my original recipe that I could use it in a pinch...or use it to jog my memory once again...but why do that when I can just post it here and never again need to rely on her version?
Reason 2: I want to urge anybody who reads this to make it...exactly as stated...and tell me it isn't delicious and comforting and filling and exceptional, in spite of the ingredients.
Because I truly believe that there are only two ways to react to this recipe. You either look at the ingredient list in absolute disgust and food paranoia, with utter disbelief that these ingredients will turn into something delicious, or you're a midwesterner that knows I'm preaching some seriously delicious gospel.
I have no problem admitting how fucking furious I am about this hot dish. Legitimately, I am repulsed. Because I could not stop laughing every few minutes in that way you laugh to get you through a disgusting task. It was a defense mechanism. Everything about this grossed me out. And it smelled AWFUL. Have you ever just...smelled mayonnaise? It is repugnant. And yet...once it went into the oven, I was in olfactory heaven. It smelled like my late teenage years, it smelled like nostalgia. It smelled fucking DELICIOUS. When I took it out of the oven, I laughed again, this time in response to how much my body wanted to house the entire fucking thing. It smelled so. fucking. good.
Alright, recipe time.
Ready for this? Here we go.
2 cups mayonnaise
1 can cream of celery soup (condensed)
1 can cream of mushroom and garlic soup (condensed)
1 single serving package of Mahatma Yellow Rice, prepared as directed
2 cans sliced water chestnuts, drained and roughly chopped
1 can of corn, drained
4 hard boiled eggs, chopped
half a pound of matchstick carrots/shredded carrots
half a container of French's fried onions (reserve other half for later)
2 ounces of bacon bits
1 cup slivered almonds
4 ounces shredded cheese of your choice (I used colby jack, but the world is your dairy oyster) (reserve other 4 ounces in typical 8 ounce package for later)
1.25 pounds cooked, shredded chicken
Cornflakes (reserve for later...DO NOT MIX THESE IN)
Ok, ready for the directions?
Preheat your oven to whatever temperature your favorite tater tots need to cook. What's a midwestern hot dish without some kind of potato side? I wanted to use tater tots, but I felt compelled to make Checker's Fries instead. For those fries, the temperature was 425.
Mix all of that shit together. There is no right or wrong way to do this, though if I may make a suggestion, incorporate the two cans of condensed soup into the two cups of mayo first, THEN mix in everything else. Stir it all up, make sure everything is good and mixed, with even access to every god forsaken element of this texture nightmare.
Throw your food goop into a 9x13 pan, and spread it out evenly. It should fill to the very brim of the CASSEROLE, but it will not bubble over. If you are so inclined, you could absolutely place the CASSEROLE on a baking tray in case there is spillover and I just got lucky.
Once your goop is good and smeared flat, evenly cover the top with the rest of your french fried onions. then generously cover the top with cornflakes. Like, you want a carpet of cornflakes. You don't even want to see that there are fried onions underneath. You forest floor that bitch with cornflakes. Be aggressive.
A side note about the cornflakes: Cornflakes used to be the only topping. I decided on a whim last night to add french fried onions to the mix, because they are delicious and I love them, even though I can't eat this hot dish. What I used to do was crush the cornflakes up, then mix them up with...I shit you not...an entire stick of butter...then I would spread that shit on top. Steffie is the one who changed it up in the way that I'm about to give as a direction, with the cornflakes and the cheese. But if you want to JUST do cornflakes and butter, go for it. Nobody will judge you, it isn't like omitting an extra stick of butter makes this healthier.
Cover your cornflakes with the remaining 4 ounces of cheese.
Bake for however long it takes for your potato side to be done. Those Checker's Fries were a little soggy after almost 30 minutes, so we took them out and Derek and Alex ate them with soft little middles. If you're not making a potato side and just need to know how long to cook the casserole, there is no wrong answer. Since everything is already cooked, if you only want to throw it in the oven for as long as it takes to melt the cheese, that is A-OK. If you want to blast that bitch for thirty minutes like we did so the top is one crusted sheet of crunchy, cheesy goodness, do it up! No wrong way to make this casserole.
Derek advises topping it with ketchup for that perfect midwestern flavor profile, but I don't think it needs it. I think, if anything, a fuck ton of hot sauce would be delicious, but when I suggested that to Derek, he said, "NO! That's too spicy for midwesterners! Ketchup. It needs ketchup." So I will defer to his better judgment.
And that's the hot dish. I joked to Derek that I almost almost ALMOST bought the stuff to make ambrosia, because what else could you logically serve as a palette cleanser after a hot dish meal? There is no other thing. It's ambrosia or nothing. But we went with nothing, because I wasn't sure my texture sensitive brain could manage two mouth feel nightmares in one day.
Another note about the ingredients:
I bought everything pre-made. The matchstick carrots? I bought in matchstick form. You can do those carrots any way you want. Chop them, shred them yourself, buy canned carrots, it doesn't matter. I like the crunch that raw carrots give, but if you want big, massive hunks of carrot that are soft when they go in, do it up. Cook them first and then chuck them into the mess.
The chicken? Frozen, pre-shredded, pre-cooked. I did fry it up in the pan before putting it in the gloop. And that is important...do not put raw chicken in this. Or if you opt to put raw chicken in this, you do so at your own risk, because I do not know what the cook time on this should be if you put in uncooked chicken. Back in the day, Steffie and I used to boil the chicken and cut it up into big ol' chunks, but I think shredded is the better way to go. So if you don't want to buy a bag of shredded chicken (it is cost prohibitive if you're aiming to keep this cheap), buy your chicken in bulk and cook it however you'd like. Same holds true for the chicken: shred it, chunk it, or fuck, you could even put a few cooked breasts on top before you cover it with your topping. This is a recipe that is easy to make your own, considering I completely fucking made it up.
I bought pre hard boiled eggs, but again, it's cheaper to hard boil your own eggs at home.
Frozen corn? That's fine.
And the measurements are just a guideline, too. Put in more mayo, put in less, I do not care, it does not matter. Want more carrots? Do it! Want less water chestnuts? Fine! This hot dish is so fucking flexible. Buy pre-fixed everything for convenience, or do everything yourself, it does not matter. There is no wrong way to make this abomination.
Just make it. I beg you. Because it's like the meanest culinary trick you'll ever play on yourself if you didn't grow up eating this shit, like I didn't. But I had it ONCE as a kid and I was so obsessed with it that I recreated it and it is now a staple in my best friend's household.
I have a feeling it will become a new staple in mine, as well.
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