Speak, Minnesotan: it's "hot dish," not "casserole"

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the passing of WSU student senate president and activist Jared Stene from Wilson's Disease, a hereditary liver disease, and he is sorely missed.

Just how much this world needs its Jared Stenes rang home earlier today as we read through the morning papers. Even in the Winona Daily News, we came across this barbarous diction in the lead of the article WSU international students get taste of first Thanksgiving meal:

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PICKWICK, Minn. — Pranita Lama, 25, never ate green bean casserole, a Minnesota staple, until Thursday.

Well, we never ate green bean casserole, either, until we went to college.  What's more,  we certainly never heard of Tater Tot casserole ever until we read about Jared's crusade to make the WSU cafeteria speak Minnesotan.

Jared would never have put up with that mangling of our Minnesota heritage. It's hot dish, by the love of all things North Star. 

It's called hot dish, doggone it.

Tomorrow, we'll be handing out the First Annual Jared Stene Hotdish Award to student groups in the First who have worked to stock food pantries across Southern Minnesota.

To further honor Stene and the anti-hunger activists, we encourage our readers to donate cans of those fundamental hot dish fixings, Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Celery or Cream of Chicken soup to their local food shelves.

Comments

[Phoenix Woman]

Thank you! Hot dish it was, hot dish it is, hot dish it will remain. You cannot attend a Minnesota family reunion, wedding reception, funeral luncheon, or any type of large family get-together without running into at least one, if not three, iterations of either the green bean hot dish or the tater tot hot dish. I brought a variation of the green bean one to my parents' place for Thanksgiving yesterday: I used the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and canned green beans as a base, then minced up the white root portion of a leek, along with some minced cashews, and mixed it in, then put it in the over for 30 minutes at 350F, putting on some French's fried onions as garnish at the 25-minute mark.

And yes, those would be excellent canned goods to bring to a food shelf.