Tater Tot Casserole

[cathschaffstump]

I've been informed by my Viable Paradise roommate Chia Evers that I should not be a tater tot tease. I am also discarding my Midwest-centric view that everyone knows how to make this.

A little bit about my history with tater tot casserole. School lunches in rural Iowa were frightening. Beef gravy that was mostly made of rubber cement. Blanditos. Soft vegetables from industrial size cans. We looked for oases where we could. Tater tot casserole turned out to be so simple that not even our lunch ladies could beat the taste out it. Ah, delicious and savory, warm tater tot casserole! Second only to Jello pudding pops and the cinnamon rolls homemade on the days they had chili!

Well. In college the cafeteria menu was similarly frightening. Texas straw hat, a scattering of corn chips covered with a scoop of tomatoey glop comes to mind. Gelatin with celery tossed in. Individual ham loaves that smelled...suspicious. There were occasions when I chose Lucky Charms for a dinner entree, but again, there were bright spots. One of them was tater tot casserole.

As a young married couple, my husband and I were reminiscing about foods we had liked in the past. We both remembered tater tot casserole from school, and we figured, gourmets that we weren't, that we could easily recreate it. It wasn't rocket science. It came from the Ore-Ida Institute after all.

Here's how it's done.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.