Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Cheesy Hashbrown Casserole

I made this Midwestern classic casserole for Independence Day. If you've ever been to a potluck in the Midwest, you're probably familiar with it.

Ingredients

3 TB of butter

1 small onion, diced

1 30 oz. bag of frozen hashbrowns 

1 can of cream of mushroom soup

1 cup of sour cream

2 1/2 cups of sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

1 cup of chicken borth

Healthy smidge of Tastefully Simple's Garlic Garlic seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

Process

In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat and add the onions. Sweat down the onions until they are soft. In the meantime, spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, add the hashbrowns, cooked onions, stock, sour cream, soup mix, and about 1 3/4 cup of cheese along with the seasonings. Mix well so it's fully incorporated. 

Place the ingredients into the baking dish and top with the rest of the cheese. Bake at anywhere from 350 to 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. I did mine at 350, and it took much longer than 45 minutes to get the sides all bubbly and the top golden brown, so I'm going with 375 degrees the next time I make it. 

If you really want to go full umami with the dish, I think it would be a good idea to sweat down some fresh mushrooms to incorporate into the recipe. I'm also contemplating the addition of smoked paprika. 

Music Friday: "New York City's Killing Me"

A good while back one of my friends on FB mentioned that he just "can't get into" the music of Ray Lamontagne even though he is critically acclaimed as a singer-songwriter. My reply to Augie's post was that I feel the same way about Wilco--just never have understood what the hullabaloo is all about.

I have a couple of Lamontagne's albums, and I like them though I'm not a huge fan. Lamontagne has a soul-folk-blues vibe that hits me in the musical sweet spot when I'm in that kind of listening mood.

The song featured today comes from Lamontagne's most recent release, God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise, and the tune acts as rhetorical hand grenade against the perception that New York City is such a vibrant and great place to be.

Take that, you damn Yankees.

For me, it also touches on how American culture has a bias or this silly idea that large cities are the places "to be," that smaller towns, rural areas, and the Midwest in general is "flyover America" and/or "boring." Call it "East Coast bias" or what Wendell Berry has called a war against rural America, there's a pervasive sentimentality about New York or other large cities in our culture.

Over the years, I've met lots of young adults who are in that in-between stage of their lives where the future is uncertain. Often, when asked about their plans, they've told me they're planning on moving to some major metropolitan area without any real game plan, and the two cities that often come up are New York and Seattle, which are two of the most expensive places to live in the US.

Since, as Mrs. Nasty could tell you, I'm notoriously tight-fisted with money, I often thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be smarter to pick a cheaper place to live?" when hearing about a person's plans to live in a metro area on the one of the coasts. In addition, there are really interesting US cities that don't have all kinds of media-induced sentimentality and nostalgia about them that offer just as good if not better opportunities for people.

New Orleans, St. Louis, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Chattanooga, Portland, Fort Collins, Little Rock, and Memphis come to mind.

I just got to get me somewhere,

Somewhere that I can be free,

Get me out of New York City, son,

New York City's killing me.

Random Notes from Home & the Road

I got back from Waterloo late this afternoon. I left Friday morning to visit my parents--my mom in their assisted living facility and my dad in a rehab facility since he got sprung from the U of Iowa Hospital on
Thursday. He's doing better, getting stronger each day it seems.

But I thought I'd share some of my random notes from the road trip since on six-hour drives I encountered some stuff, and the mind tends to wander in various directions.

I don't know how truckers do it. On the drive back, my lower back was getting achy. Driving a big rig for such an extended period of time has to entail some lower back doodads that keeps a body loose.

At a gas station, a sign informed me that because of "in climate weather" the electronic pay pads weren't working properly.

The wind farm northeast of Bloomington-Normal is an impressive sight, so impressive that I wonder if they rotating blades cause bad driving as some people get transfixed by those rotating blades that create energy. What's really cool is seeing one of those blades being hauled on the road. You feel small.

About a decade ago, I vowed to turn the channel whenever an Aerosmith, Styx, or REO Speedwagon song came on. I hate that shit. I am especially disgusted by Aerosmith for some reason.

I ate at the I-80 monolith in eastern Iowa this afternoon, at the Wendy's inside. I had a fancy side salad and some of their fries. They were good. I was surprised by how decent the salad was--quite good for fast food.

No cicadas in Waterloo. I suspect they'll get the 17-year variety in four years.

I heard The Wailin' Jennys on NPR this morning on the Mountain Stage program. They are damn talented ladies.

I get angry at people who consider the Midwest "flyover" country or a boring landscape. There are many beautiful woods, rolling hills, and flatlands on my drive in a northeasterly direction. With people's addiction for sublime-like landscapes, they miss the beauty of nuance, the power Bryant writes about in the "The Prairies." Flat isn't necessarily ugly, clowns.

I like sports a lot and all, but I wonder if the collective citizenry spent more time paying attention to politics and policies rather than obsessing about what's wrong with LaBron James, we'd be a hell of a lot better off. Or rather, at least citizens would be more engaged with what's going on. Sports are the new "opiate of the masses," but speaking as a fan of college football and MLB, man, that's a good opiate. Me like.

I miss Ron Santo on the radio.

Thoughts on the Midwest

Reading Michael Martone's Running in Place has made me think about where I grew up and how it influenced how I look at life. I prefer Martone's Flatness and Other Landscapes over his more recent collection, but both books showcase how he's a Midwestern guy, born and raised in Fort Wayne as he's fond of relating in his essays, and how place and placedness is important.

From my perspective, the Midwest is comprised of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illiniois, and Indiana. I still debate whether Missouri and Ohio are Midwestern. Ohio just seems too Eastern to me even though the state has a mix of agriculture and industry, which seems to be typical of most Midwestern states. I like the Show Me State a lot. Hell, I lived a good portion of my life there--nine years in Kirksville, a short time in Kansas City, and five years in St. Louis. But it's too geographically and subculturally diverse, and to me the state seems like ten sub-states: northwest Missouri, northeast Missouri, St. Louis metro area, southeastern MO (Sikeston, Cape), south central MO, Springfield/Branson area, Columbia, the Ozarks, the Neosho/Joplin/Nevada sliver, and the KC metro area.

But maybe I'm just overthinking Missouri since I've been in all parts of the state. And the fact that it was border state South during the Civil War doesn't help its cause. When I think Midwest, I think Union. I also think Big Ten, which helps Ohio's chances.

Even though Midwesterners are known for being friendly and "nice," I think many Midwesterners have a fatalistic ethos, especially now with globalization spiriting away manufacturing and factory jobs. But that character trait was probably always there because the people who settled the plains were farmers, people who depended on the vicissitudes of the weather, folks who had to think somehow, sometime things aren't going to shake out right.

Shit goes wrong. All the time.

But maybe even that niceness is a bit stand-offish. As Martone relates in "Roads Lined with Running Fences," his friend from New Jersey ponders the meaning of how the Midwest doesn't have many walls but lots of "see through fences." As Martone interprets it, these fences are "an aesthetic compromise between private property and being part of a neighborhood. A fence allows its builder to say, 'I am alone. Separate, not different. I've got nothing to hide, but don't come too close.' It's a delicate balance" (98).

Cheers to not coming too close.

Porcine Goodness

The cuisine of the deep South is known for fried food. You got okra, chicken, and the ubiquitous chicken-fried steak. Those people will fry almost anything. Heck, even ribs and candy bars.

But one item you don't see in most parts of the country is the pork tenderloin sandwich. That delicacy is especially a favorite of my home state, the great state of Iowa, and other parts of the Midwest. 

This afternoon I did myself a favor and ordered a pork tenderloin sandwich from McHugh's, a fast food joint whose slogan is "Famous in Coles County, not the World." A smattering of pickles atop the patty coupled with adequate amount of yellow mustard on the bun is an accompaniment that befits this noble sandwich.