Some might consider casserole a one-dish wonder. But to others, it's a gloppy, gluey concoction that stops the appetite cold.
We asked readers to send the Deseret News stories of their most hated casseroles from their childhood. To sweeten the deal, we offered a cookbook to the first five entries. However, so many people responded within minutes of each other that it was hard to limit the cookbook giveaway to only five people. (Does that say something about how vivid these memories are?)
So we ended up giving cookbooks to Echo Taylor, Lori Rammell, the Kyle Snow family, Sarah Stoker, Lori Andrews, Tina Larsen, Lisa Buckmiller, Liz Warner, Melissa McQuarrie, Betty Blair and Ann Shunn.
Our Casserole Chronicles underscored the fact that what is one child's best-ever favorite casserole is another child's dinner nightmare.
Tamale pie, Spanish rice, Hawaiian haystacks and shepherd's pie are all popular dishes. Maybe it was a less-skilled preparation, or poor ingredients, or maybe just the palate of the recipient that put these on the "icky" list.
Then there's Vienna-sausage casserole, shipwreck, weiner casserole and macaroni & ketchup, which probably give new meaning to the phrase "just like Mom used to make."
And the dinner in a pumpkin story should be a cautionary tale to moms everywhere. A casserole is never improved when it comes out of the oven served in a brownish, sunken-in, goopy and stringy container. Pumpkins are for candles, not casseroles.
And Betty Blair's memories of Great Depression dinners may serve as a reminder to just be thankful for whatever food we might have.
Here are the stories, with a warning to read at your own risk. Some may definitely cause you to lose your appetite.
My least favorite casserole had to be my mom's Spanish rice. It was made with rice, hamburger, great big pieces of onion, and big ol' stewed tomatoes (among other things.)
Obviously, I wasn't a fan of onions or tomatoes, so whether they were actually as big as I remember can be debated, but I detested everything about that dish. It literally made me gag — which just made my mom angrier. I used to try hiding the stuff in my napkin, as those were the days when we couldn't be excused from the table unless we had cleaned up our plates, but my mom always knew what I was up to.
I eventually overcame my phobia and tried real Spanish rice as an adult, and it's nothing like this casserole-like thing my mom made. In fact, I kind of like it!
— Lori Rammell, Sandy
I'm not entirely sure this can even be called a casserole, but it's my dad's favorite food. Macaroni and ketchup. That's all there is to it.
Cook elbow macaroni, drain it, drown it, mix it and eat it. My dad won't eat goulash or lasagna or spaghetti, but he will eat this stuff. Even the smell of it years later evoke memories of going hungry. (Can I make is sound more pathetic and tell you that this is what I had for supper on my 16th birthday? Sniff, sniff.)
—Echo Taylor, Orem
On Halloween, our mother always made us a special treat to have before we went trick or treating.
It was called dinner in a pumpkin. It was like a hamburger soup with green olives and green peppers in it, cooked in a pumpkin. All three of us boys hated it, but we didn't want to hurt our mom's feelings so we choked down as little as possible and said we were just anxious to get out trick or treating.
It was not until we were married that we told our mom how much we hated it, because she really thought she was doing something special for us.
—Kyle, Brooks and Ryan Snow,
Roosevelt
Hot-dog cabbage casserole. No real recipe, just make a white sauce, add onions, mustard, par-boiled cabbage and cut-up hot dogs. Put the concoction in a baking dish and top with buttered bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees until it bubbles. Top with ketchup. Note: The casserole will be green.
Bon appetit,
— Sarah Stoker, Riverton
My mother was a great cook, fixing us three carefully prepared meals every day.
Sundays she often cooked roast and potatoes. Sometimes there were lots of leftovers, so during the next week we were sure to find on our dinner plates the dreaded "Hash."
She had a hand grinder, and she ground together the leftover potatoes and roast beef into a gooey, indistinguishable mass that she heated up and served.
With enough catsup we could usually get it down. There weren't many meals she served that we didn't relish, but "hash" was second only to liver on our list of bad food.
?— Liz Warner, Salt Lake City
When it comes to casseroles I hate, the first thing that comes to mind are Hawaiian haystacks.
I grew up in Arizona and had never heard of these before until I came to BYU in the late '70s.
My roommate was from California, and we lived in an apartment with four other girls from Idaho.
To save money and time, we would pool our grocery money and take turns cooking dinner. My California roommate, Vicki, and I HATED Hawaiian haystacks.
They looked like barf on a plate to us.
One day, when it was two of the other roommates' turn to cook dinner and I saw that it was going to be the dreaded Hawaiian Haystacks, I looked out our ground-floor bedroom window and saw Vicki walking home from class through our apartment parking lot and decided to warn her.
I opened the window and told her what we were having for dinner. After we both made some "gagging" noises, I climbed out the bedroom window and we walked to McDonald's for dinner. Not that McDonald's was any better, but to us, better than Hawaiian haystacks."
—Lisa Buckmiller, Centerville
I immediately reminisced about some thrown-together stuff that my wonderful and sweet Mom used to make which was appropriately called "shipwreck."
Shipwreck had a taste like no other but could be compared to the flavor of vomit! I don't know how the combination of such ordinary things would meld into such a nasty taste. But it did, and to this day, I still detest kidney beans!
The recipe includes ground beef, sliced potatoes, kidney beans and tomato soup, all cooked up in an electric skillet. Put 'em all together and whatya got? A big, nasty pan of SHIPWRECK!
Thanks for the memories! (Bleahhhh!!)"
— Lori Andrews, Sandy
Isn't everybody's unfavorite shepherd's pie?
As a kid, I loved mashed potatoes everywhere but at home, because at home it always meant we'd have that nasty tomato soup, green beans and hamburger topped with old mashed potatoes the next day.
Poor Mom! We all sat around the table and whined about it, except my dad, who forced it down quickly and ran! As a mom now, I know just how she must have felt. Still, you'd think she'd stop making it! It was much more of a fight than it was worth!"
— Tina Larsen, Smithfield
Vienna-sausage casserole was one of my father's favorite meals, but none of us kids (or even my mother) was fond of it at all. Mom would fix it for us occasionally, but mostly if we kids were not going to be home for dinner. I guess Mom was better at suffering through it than we were.
Vienna Sausage Casserole
3 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoon flour
3/4 cup tomato juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1/4 cup thinly sliced onion
3 cups sliced cooked potatoes
2 4-ounce cans Vienna sausages
1/2 cup grated cheese
Buttered cracker crumbs
Melt butter over low heat; blend in flour.
Add tomato juice and cook until thick and smooth, stirring constantly.
Add salt, Worcestershire sauce, green pepper and onion; simmer 3 minutes.
Arrange layers of potatoes, Vienna sausages and tomato sauce.
Top with cracker crumbs and cheese. Top with several sausages.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
— Ann Shunn, Kaysville
"I remember a casserole with sliced potatoes, hamburger, some sauce and peas, and we couldn't leave the table until we had eaten all of our food.
My sister and I hated peas, so I would swallow them whole, and Kay would line them under her plate.
To this day, my kids don't know what peas taste like."
— Elaine Beardshall,
Salt Lake City
Tamale pie. Just the name of it makes me cringe.
I remember dawdling on my way into the house if we were having this casserole. I would do anything to just be able to skip out on dinner that night.
I pleaded with my parents. "Don't make me eat this!" and "I'll eat anything else!" and also "I'd rather eat oatmeal than this!" were just a few of the many I used, in vain.
Some nights, I said I felt sick. I had felt perfectly fine before I knew what we were having, but the smell made me sick. So I would lie down on the couch and groan and grumble and try to hide the sounds of my stomach groaning and grumbling, too.
A few of the things that I really hate about tamale pie are the seemingly random ingredients in it.
It seems like the person who created the slop just had the start of a good, delicious recipe and then tripped on the way to fix something else and spilled many different ingredients into the concoction.
The corn meal in it felt gritty on my teeth. Like dirt. Olives, cheese, hamburger, and tomato goop are a few of the items in the mixture.
Everyone in my family hated it. Except for Mom and Dad, who seemed to like every recipe, no matter what is in it. They would eat the dinner, the leftovers and any remnants from the meal that night, because no one else would try to eat it. It made us all gag"
— Maren Williams, Salem
My early years growing up in Salt Lake City were during the Great Depression. I didn't realize how tough things were for my family of nine. My parents came from rural farms where food was plentiful, so we had a small garden on a very small city yard.
I do not remember a time that we didn't have food. My mother was a good cook and baked bread three times a week. I know now that her dollar resources were few, and she had to "extend" her meat and fish dishes.
Consequently, we had lots of soup, stews and casseroles. We were grateful for what we had to eat, but I did have my favorites.
I don't remember my mother using a lot of recipes, but I've discovered an old cookbook she used with lots of recipes she had written on blank areas.
I really disliked the weiner casserole, also known as "busy day meal," but the boys liked it.
WEINER CASSEROLE (BUSY DAY MEAL)
1 small onion, chopped
1 large can pork & beans
1 can stewed tomatoes
4-5 wieners, sliced
Put in casserole dish, stir and seaon to taste. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
— Betty Blair, Murray
E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com