Casserole & Hotdish Hats

Hotdish is the Midwest's word for a casserole, and it is taken personally. Minnesota and western Wisconsin say hotdish; most of the country says casserole, and Garrison Keillor joked that in Lutheran country anyone who says casserole is trying to be uppity. The classic is tater tot hotdish. A 1930 recipe turns up in the Grace Lutheran Ladies Aid Cookbook, Tater Tots arrived in 1953, and the blueprint is protein, a family-size can of cream of mushroom soup, frozen corn, cheddar and tots lined up in the pan. Green bean casserole came from Dorcas Reilly at Campbell's in 1955, first called the Green Bean Bake, and it lands in more than 20 million American homes every Thanksgiving. These casserole and hotdish hats are for the cook behind the pan. The badges name the dish and the crown: CASSEROLE QUEEN and TATER TOT HOTDISH. The sentence designs carry the jokes: the correction that it is hotdish, not casserole; cream of mushroom promoted to mother sauce; a green bean casserole served as an amuse-bouche; the 9x13 pan that has been to every funeral in town; and the proper Minnesota portion, which one commenter put as 9x13 inch, serves one. HOTDISH NOT CASSEROLE and the AMUSE-BOUCHE line each come in a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to the potluck, or give one to whoever keeps the church cookbook.