Seven Easy Cold-Weather Casseroles That Won’t Fix Any of This

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/opinion/sunday/casseroles-that-wont-fix-any-of-this.html

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Skillet Mac and Cheese. Ahh, an old standby. Leave it to familiar things, like the scent of pine, a gentle rain or the lack of a constant feeling of dread to bring you back to childhood. There’s nothing like a home-style dish to deliver the quaint sensation of being filled with melted cheese and carbohydrates while falling asleep on a couch and not thinking about the next world war.

Chicken Alfredo Baked Penne. This easy dish has only five ingredients. Five would also be an acceptable number of years to travel back in time, if you could, but the closest you’ll ever get to time travel is voting in the midterms, which could land you and everyone else much further in the past than five years. This casserole calls for dairy and gluten, so make sure you have two bathrooms if serving to friends whom natural selection somehow skipped over.

Loaded Baked Potato Casserole. With the word “loaded” in its name, you might hope that it contains a little something extra like, say, batteries, to power something useful like, say, a time machine, but it doesn’t. Nope! This casserole mostly contains just potatoes, which are unfortunately useless in the attempt to time travel, except, of course, when used to defend oneself from baffled torch-wielding serfs in 15th-century France. This recipe also calls for six tablespoons of unsalted butter — great for lubricating time-machine skids, but you won’t have to worry about that because this casserole will not allow you to travel through time. Sorry!

Shepherd’s Pie. What’s worse than calling oneself a pie, despite being filled with beef? Why, not having access to a time machine, of course! Shepherds herd sheep, which must be why they were cool with turning cows into deceptively named non-dessert items. Surprisingly, the mutton-filled “cowherd’s pie” never quite caught on, almost giving the impression that society had room in its heart for only one crust-covered baked meat dish pretending to be pie.

Mediterranean Tuna Noodle Casserole. Though this dish boasts a sensory transport to the Mediterranean, the very cradle of tuna noodles, you will unfortunately remain firmly planted in the present day, where everything is still happening right now. The recipe also includes the option of adding dill, which, time-chronology-wise, will change nothing. Unless, of course, you’re a survivor of an herb-related trauma and suffer dill-induced flashbacks, which is supposedly the least desirable form of time travel.

Ancient Grain and Vegetable Casserole. Bet you thought this one would be a time machine for sure. Nope! Though ancient grains do not actually transport you back to ancient times, they are haunted, providing you a nifty portal for communicating with the netherworld.

“Amaranth, what was it like riding a horse and buggy everywhere?”

“Time is cyclical, and your daughter used to be a stinkbug you stepped on in another life.”

“Quinoa, was Julius Caesar hot?”

“The dream about the Russian sailor was actually a memory, and the Mayans were off just by 10 years.”

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna. This cozy dish layers savory roasted vegetables with wide flat noodles, much the way time is layered with your egregious mistakes and carelessness. Maybe you haven’t yet figured out how to traverse the past while riding an 11-pound starch-and-broth-filled Pyrex sled to repair all the damage you’ve incurred in your short life. But slow cookers will go on sale soon, and with free shipping and some jumper cables, you just might be able to rectify those childhood grievances between the midterms and Thanksgiving.

Sarah Hutto (@huttopian) is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post and McSweeney’s.

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