Funeral Salad

In the Mid-West, major life events require food.  Someone is born, you eat. Someone marries, you eat.  Someone dies…that’s right, you eat.  Funerary potlucks, usually take place in a church basements, with female parishioners being pressed into service to provide dishes that accomplice cold cut platters and bread sponsored by the deceased loved ones.  By taxonomy, this is a Fruit Salad, this version however is healthful in name only.

Core Ingredients

• Multiple cans of canned fruit packed in heavy syrup
• Canned pie filling
• Flair ingredients (added at the creators discretion, or lack thereof)

The basic procedure is simple: Open cans, drain liquid, dump into a large bowl, and mix. The sugar content of this dish is an attempt at homicide in and of itself. The real atrocity comes in the myriad of ways in which each individual offender can add their own signature flair.

First: The canned fruit…in heavy syrup.  The contents of that little can started its long journey to your local grocery store as a perfectly happy, delicious and nutritious little peach, grape, or pineapple.  It blossomed and fed itself on water and sunshine, until it was just beginning to ripen. Then, it was torn from its branch, sanitized, peeled, chopped, and boiled in sugar sluice with preservatives and food coloring added to get just the right shade of grey.  Then, to make sure that no hint of nutrition could survive, it was compressed in to cans and sealed under intense heat and pressure to ensure that it would remain shelf stable for at least three years.  Whatever is left after all of this, one cannot say, but only a crime scene investigator could determine if it is still fruit.

Second: If the description of the industrial canning of fruit didn’t frighten you, this should!  Take the same process as above, but triple the sugar and additives, and lengthen the boiling time until it has congealed the fruit into a viscous, spooky secretion.

Third: Flair.  Although creativity is important to creating memorable dishes, not every memory is pleasant.  A cook has a responsibility to those who eat their food. While some individuals restrain themselves to a few token banana slices or halved grapes, most tend to compound their felonies by adding anything from their stash of fat-filled and sugar-coated contraband.  Nothing that is served with marshmallows, snowflake coconut, candied nuts, and whipped topping, deserves to be called salad!

Calling this dish "Fruit Salad" borders on slander.  The main offense is sugar, lots and lots of processed sugar.  Preserving fruit removes much of its natural sugars.  Processed sugar is added in an attempt to make the end result appealing.  This dish consists of at least two if not three ingredients that have been "sugar-preserved."   Perhaps a funeral luncheon is the only appropriate place to serve this dish.  It might prove to be a comfort to a grieving family to know that by eating food like this, they will all soon be reunited with the dearly departed in that Diabetes Clinic in the sky.

The appeal of fruit salad is its freshness and its simplicity, you don't need a can opener to achieve this.  Select the freshest fruits available, clean them, chop them as necessary, and combine them with a bit of lemon juice to prevent oxidation.  At the height of the produce season, nothing more is required.  If you feel you do need a dressing of some kind, consider a dollop of honey and yogurt, or a reduction of fruit juice. For your flair, try some sprigs of mint.


Potluck Crime:  Aiding and Diabetic, Fruit Cupability

Green Bean Casserole

The first time I had this dish, I ate it under protest.   The last time I had this dish, well, let's just say the cook and I are no longer on speaking terms.  Children all over the world do not eat their vegetables for one reason or another.  If there was but one reason, it might be this dish.  Kitchen criminals attempt to defraud their guests with the lure of the healthy, green vegetables, but the crisp, crunchy veneer of deceit indicates this dish has malnutritious intentions.  By taxonomy, this is a either a vegetable bake, or a green bean-intensive soup.

Core Ingredients

• Canned Green Beans
• Flavor filler
• Crunchy topping

Without exception, this dish can be eaten without baking.  Green beans do not require stewing in a casserole.  This neither improves their natural flavor, nor their already canned texture.  The truth is, this is baked as a casserole, usually until the oven toasts the top of the green beans, and the filler agglutinates a mucus paste onto the bottom of the green beans.  Seasoned oven offenders can sometimes even eradicate the verdant hues of canned green beans, replacing it with the tawny ochre of the filler.

First: Canned green beans.  Yes, they are inexpensive.  an 8-oz can often goes for under a dollar.  However, 16-oz of fresh green beans are usually around two dollars, plus it is less packaging and you are not buying a lot of water.  Proof?  Drain a can of canned green beans.  How many ounces of water did  you buy?  Canned or even frozen green beans are so different from their fresh counterparts, it really is no wonder children all across America loathe vegetables.  Both processes alter the chemistry of the vegetable by leaching nutrition, texture, and flavor into either the "ice" or the "liquid," depending on the process.  Neither thrift nor palate excuse this vegetable derision.

Second: Flavor filler. Canned vegetables are not known for flavor, so over the years, other canned products have bubbled up to lance this flavor shortfall.  Often enough, salty, slightly inorganic but somehow creamy soups are involved.  Gobs of sour cream have been known to surface, along with butter bricks, and jars and bars of almost-cheese.  It is the filler that does the hatchet job on already failing haricot verts.  Guarded family recipes involving this dish will specify the most profane secret filler ingredients.

Third: Crunchy topping.  The cooked, canned green beans have already lost the texture test.  A bite feels slick and wet like a squeaky shoe out of the rain.  Several mouthfuls make this very apparent.  To ensure this crackpot crockery crime gets eaten to the bottom, a topping ensues, as if to offer some penitence for the soggy bottom.  Variety in this area usually mocks the dish with irrelevance.  "Bacon" bits.  Freeze-dried onion soup mix.  Crackers.  Soup crackers (at the price of some honesty to the rest of the dish).  Croutons, apparently.  Salty, always and somehow, as if the topping might somehow dry out the casserole just a little.

A green bean casserole is likely going to contain more fat and salt than is really safe to serve.  Again, the canning or freezing process takes so much value out of the green beans, they are little more than fiber and color.  Stewing the green beans in the casserole may even call the fiber value into question.   Since the filler often doubles or triples the price of the dish, there's no defense left to call this a thrifty meal.  Fresh green beans that have been steamed or precisely boiled (no walking away for 30 minutes to chatter with your guests), mixed with other fresh and healthy flavors will easily make even the pickiest of kids recognize that vegetables are important, require a lot of attention, and have a personality all their own.  A properly cooked green bean dish may even avoid the expense of obesity, heart disease, and teen angst for parents this holiday season.  Love your kids and love to cook well.

Potluck Crime: Comestible Sabotage, Second Degree Salt and Batter

Crock Pot Franks and Beans

I was at an American Legion somewhere North of Columbus, Ohio when I was exposed to this dish.  The culinary carnage that ensued is worthy of a war tribunal.  By taxonomy, this is a chili con carne, or it is a stew made out of a chili dog.

This dish is minimally comprised of:

• Hot Dogs
• Beans
• Sweet Sauce

It is always prepared in a slow-cooking system, typically an electric crock-pot.  When there is glazed artwork on the outside of the crock pot, such as NASCAR insignias, you know the kitchen criminal was in a real hurry.

First: the hot dogs.  American wieners are, on commerce volume, the worst parts of any number of animals, made to a fine paste and shoved into an artificial casing.  Further, the meat is pre-cooked.  Almost every time, there is a meat tenderizer as well as some sort of sugar, such as dextrose, and plenty of salt.  when sliced or quartered, the average American hot dog will take on the appearance of a dismembered finger, or worse.  Any sausage will be greasy, so stewing this meat in a crock pot guarantees the grease will rise to the top of the container.  Look for vibrant, orange pools at the top of the dish.

Second: beans.  The Mid-West relishes their canned, sweet beans.  Hormel, Bush's, you name it.  These beans have been pre-cooked and embalmed in a heavy corn syrup.  They also contain a decent amount of salt.  These beans by themselves are grimy and saccharine, but when combined with something else, The syrup overpowers most anything.  Unless you are going through chemotherapy, you have no basis of comparison for this flavor.

Third: sweet sauce.  As if the beans are not sweet enough, pre-diabetic America seems to think sugar always improves a dish.  The sweet sauce is often a hasty afterthought, usually involving condiments such as barbecue sauce, ketchup, and steak sauces.  Sauces take a lot of work to get right, so without good instincts, starting with something really sweet means you have no control over where the flavor is going to go, because it is already pinned down in a corner.  Some of the more heinous acts to adjust the sweet sauce involve chili powder or pepper sauce.  This is a lot like dropping gunpowder into a gas tank to make a car run faster.

The syrup of the beans and the sauce add their flavor to the hot dogs.  This is apparently the intended goal of the slow cooking.  If this meat wasn't pre-cooked, braising meat with a fine flavor base is a good way to cook a tough cut of meat.  But, this is stewing in a double-sweet syrup.  Furthermore, American wieners are formed meat and then they have the tenderizers in them anyway, so slow cooking makes no sense on meat soft enough for retirement homes.  This isn't the right way to cook this meat (try grilling, as intended).  A recipe involving fresh meat and better beans is the start of a real chili. Invented in Texas, you would think this is an American natural skill.  It isn't. 

Potluck Crime:  Aiding and Diabetic, Petty Salt

Scalloped Potato Hot Dish

As a child, my mother introduced me to my father's family favorite.   I was scarred by this and other dinners in my youth.  This dish survives as an inexpensive alternative to knowing what you are doing.  Taxonomy suggests a hybrid of au gratin potatoes and pot roast.

Main ingredients:

• Potatoes
• Ham
• Cheese
• (optional) Crunchy topping

At a glance, this doesn't sound wretched.  Wait, give it some time.  American thrift and apathy has produced some convulsive mistakes in this dish.  The general idea is a starchy, braised meat dish.

First, the potatoes are often undercooked.  When they are undercooked, they have a crispness akin to an apple, but only in the center.  Although digestible to iron stomachs, undercooked potatoes are also rather slimy in this context, and even on their own, can cause child-like palates to heave and throw.  The gluten liquefies.  Essentially, it makes a paste. 

Second: Ham.   Ham is sold as an already smoked or otherwise cured meat.  It also means the meat is  store-bought, packaged, and prepared.  If so, it is likely soaking in a cocktail of preservatives.  The meat ought to already be tender by curing and further tenderized by chemical tenderizers.  Now, applying the braising process of a pot roast to slices or chunks of it should further what, make it more tender?  No.  You end up with a soup meat at this point.  And, for added effect, the soup consists of gluten, FDA-knows-what chemical tenderizers, and enough salt to make a functioning,  electric battery.

Third: Cheese.  There are so many ways a cheese can go wrong in a dish.  Try making a proper cream sauce and not knowing what is involved.  Even a decent amateur cook can be foiled by a good cheese in a recipe without a solid education on cheese in cooking.  So, why work with real cheese?  Many Americans don't.  It's too complicated.  Velveeta is known for its cheese-like foodstuff.  No surprises here, it cooks a lot like margarine.  The artificial color really helps remind you that it isn't exactly cheese, either.  still too much work?  Canned, and even aerosol cheese is an even faster alternative to ingredients.  The cheese as a top layer also creates a heat shield, preventing the potatoes from further cooking.  It melts into a surprisingly consistent, sticky layer.  When combined with the soupy, salty gluten, the cheese becomes self-sticky, but then is externally slimy. 

When combining these three core ingredients, over the years, kitchen criminals have been known to try to improve on what really is a bad idea.  The soupy quality has to be soaked up, somehow, with an optional ingredient.  Enter the crunchy topping.  Anything that toasts well has been applied.  Croutons.  Crumbled crackers or chips.  Dry onion soup mix.

The one, consistent quality of all these ingredients is salt, and lots of it, especially the artificial cheeses out there. 

If you really want scalloped potatoes, read a recipe written by someone who knows what they are doing.  Slice the potatoes coffee filter thin with a deli slicer, not the blunt carving knife that wasn't even sharp when you bought it.  Cook them properly.  If you really want ham, remember, it is probably already cooked.  There's no need to slop the trio together in a dish.  Ever. 

Potluck Crime: Aggravated Salt and Batter