I know how it got added to our holiday fare – we lived in northern MN! Oh, the exotic flavor of pistachio pudding from a box. Always the cop-out potluck side, paired with green bean "hotdish" w/french onions.

meats) sandwiches, deep-fried pork tenderloin sandwiches Minnesota: hotdish and bars (heh!)

in the kitchen and invite my family over every possible holiday to avoid the standard chicken, burgers or "hotdish" (see: casserole). I enjoy eating out, but prefer cooking for my girlfriend at home while putting together my own...

I actually really like green bean hotdish, and I’ve tried to improve on it (fresh green beans, homemade cream soup) and just can’t — it’s got to be canned green beans, Campbell’s cream soup, and...

in restaurants. In fact, I think in Minnesota, we’d probably call that Johnny Marzetti "hotdish." Sounds good! ~TDQ

that i haven’t seen hotdish on the menu, anywhere, though — yet!)

I think that cooking was a chore my mother would rather not have performed, but we were always fed. Growing up in Northern MN (Duluth), hotdish was the norm – tater tot (ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, veg-all, milk),...

what kind of shoddy midwesterner are you? you don’t like hotdish!!! =D also, i think i really do need my cold weather with altitude — and all the skiing, sledding and gravitationally-driven fun & games that come with...

with those in my life. But, at the same time, I have a strong appreciation for the "tuna hotdish" foods – they are tasty and warm and salty and filling and, at least to me, speak of love and life and home. I don’t know...

and that the rapturous description of Middle American food from the original poster isn’t any more accurate a picture of the way “middle America” eats than a description of people eating nothing but tater-tot...

): ~Hotdish on a stick—the tater tots disintigrate into nothing ~Key lime pie on a stick—too much sugar or too much lime or too much something and not enough of something else. ~Anything from Gass Station—worst...

You forgot the can of Veg-All (http://www.vegall.com/) - that’s what they called tater tot hotdish in MN. Also never seen it with cheese.

My food background is highly varied, coming from humble 70’s era cream soup everything, chili dogs with Hormel, hamburger rice hotdish and mock chow mein to being a very poor single mother who once subsisted on saltines and...

The recipes I have for hotdish (one word, at least when I’ve seen it written) just call for what we affectionately know as “cream of whatever” soup — celery, mushroom, chicken, whatever.