Venn diagram

One of my favorite things to eat in winter is tater tot casserole.

It’s the epitome of comfort food, and it serves a necessary purpose: in lieu of sunlight (because there isn’t any in Wisconsin in January), we need to get our Vitamin D through other channels. And what better channels are there than ground beef and mushrooms?

This is my recipe. You will note that it is unfussy and economical, well-suited for the overextended parent who has difficulties getting dinner on the table. Swap out or switch up ingredients as needed. 

• 1 lb. ground beef, cooked and drained
• 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup
• 1-2 jars of button or sliced mushrooms
• 1-2 cans of Veg-All, or if you are in a situation akin to mine (read on for details), you might want to deconstruct and use separate cans of carrots, corn, and/or green beans
• Bag of frozen tater tots

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Mix everything (except for the tots) in a big bowl. You may be tempted to sneak a bite of the casserole mixture; this is normal and appropriate. Spray a 9x13-inch baking dish with Pam and spread the casserole mixture in it. Top with the bag of frozen tater tots. Bake for an hour or until the casserole is piping hot and the tots are crispy and golden brown. Ketchup or hot sauce slathered on top is a nice touch.

You’re welcome.       

***

When my kids were little, I made tater tot casserole all the time and never fielded a complaint. They ate it without protest, until (perplexingly, alarmingly) their taste buds started to morph. As they’ve gotten older, each of them has declared moratoria on certain foods they used to shove in their mouth holes as toddlers.

I understand that things change and evolve, so I try to honor their new and emerging demands – but only when I’m feeling generous in time and spirit. (Which is to say, most days I tell them to just pick out whatever ingredient they hate from whatever meal I’ve made.) The problem is this: no matter what I do, I can’t make all three of them happy at the same time. Someone always gets pissed off.

Take my tater tot casserole, for example. As I was preparing it for dinner last week, I stared into my baking dish and realized it was no longer my friend. It had become, of all insane things, a mathematical dilemma. I could almost hear it taunting me.

“Do you remember what a Venn diagram is?” it hissed.

“I think so?” I answered.

“I’ve become one,” it said. “Solve me.”

Indeed, my baking dish was correct: to make the casserole edible for each member of my family, I needed to construct it in overlapping sections not unlike a Venn diagram. Of course, my Venn diagram was warped from the start because I was working with rectangles instead of circles. And they were sloppy, imprecise rectangles, because, really, how can one keep uncooked casserole sections from spreading into others?

This was my predicament: 

• Child #1 and #2 like mushrooms, but child #3 doesn’t.
• Child #1 and #3 like beef, but child #2 is a vegetarian.
• Child #2 and #3 eat canned corn, but child #1 won’t touch it. 

Therefore, I assembled my baking dish using a design like this:  

A = set containing mushrooms

B = set containing ground beef

C = set containing canned corn

Are you feeling a little rattled by now? Yes, me too, because this approach to cooking screws with your mind. Case in point: when my tater tot casserole was finished in the oven, I could barely remember which set was which, let alone which kid was eating which set. Who was assigned to AC, AB, and BC? Was anyone a pure A, B, or C? Why had I felt compelled to do this in the first place?

The easy part was ABC, which was just for my husband and me. We ate our set and were satisfied. Everyone else grumbled because, according to them, nothing came out right. Child #3 said his set smelled like mushrooms, #2 found a trace of ground beef in her set, and, worst of all, #1 announced she no longer liked tater tots.

In their eyes, my casserole was a big fat fail. But instead of mentally snapping – as one would rightly expect me to do – I partook in some emergency meditation breathing, which helped me calmly consider my casserole in a different light.

Instead of a meal I had taken the time to prepare and that zero of my children had appreciated, I chose to look at my casserole as a symbol of motherhood. We try to do our best, no? We know that a 100% success rate is impossible if we’ve got more than one kid. What is worth a headache one day might not be worth it another. We mourn the lost taste buds of babyhood and celebrate the discerning individuals our children have become. We devise Venn diagrams to be creative in our parenting and then acknowledge that mathematical reasoning doesn’t apply when it comes to picky eaters.

And sometimes we decide to shelve a favorite recipe until #1, #2, and #3 go off to college.