Tater Tot Casserole

Of course we’re all really interested and appalled about the Dugger Downfall on Ashley Madison, and ready to protest Planned Parenthood, and wondering about the theology of Tullian, and about the terribleness of humanity in general, and I, for one, was all in a froth about the stock market (that’s just a little joke, I barely even know what the stock market is for), but really, all that fades away when you turn your eyes and thoughts to the question of

Tater Tot Casserole.

I know this because I link myself up on Facebook every day (don’t raise that eye brow, how else can I trust and believe that everyone will read my post before they do anything else…let me, as someone or other said, be your morning cup of coffee) and suddenly a lot of heat and light emerged around the fact that I said ‘tater tot’ and ‘casserole’ together in one sentence.

And that’s as it should be, because really, is anyone going to wake up and straight away begin arguing about the nature of sin? Sin is Bad. But tater tots, that is something potentially…well, delicious. And if it includes other stuff, like ground turkey (although I have some very serious doubts about this) and the high heat of a modern oven, well, there we can begin to wave our arms and argue back and forth about something interesting.

I confess, I googled Duggar Tater Tot Casserole and methodically clicked through three pages of blog posts before I found even one snarky paragraph, which was a great disappointment to me. I was prepared for the whole world to be sniggering and pointing fingers. The only really funny line I found was a reference to Cream of Crap Soup.

So, I gather, Tater Tot Casserole must be delicious, it must be part of the fabric of what makes America Great. Not only is it very cheap to make, it can feed an army. Still I had better not make it myself because I am not looking for food that is that delicious and that includes anything like potato and high fructose corn syrup. This is not a moral theological decision, it’s because when I eat potato, I balloon out and begin to succumb to a bubbling frothing sense of entitlement about what I should and should not be allowed to eat. The presence of a potato on my plate will almost at once make me angry about toiling up the hill in my constant effort to be sort of thin. This obviously isn’t what happens to the Duggars. They all look great. Color me jealous  that they get to eat carbs without devolving into diabetes.

Also, as I look over all the pictures of people happily eating potato melded together with ground turkey by means of cans of mushroom and chicken soup, I realize that I don’t want my children to be that happy. Sure, it tastes great, but life is hard, kiddo, and you need the intellectual and emotional fortitude that only comes in facing down some ghastly lightly sautéed mushrooms–you know, in a goodly measure of butter, a gentle pouring out into the pan of about half a cup of vodka, the long luxious ribbon of cream, and then, when it is bubbling along in its gentle inferno, nestling in the crusty browned pork chops, you know, with the bone in. The children stare at it in sorrow and remain silent, because if you can’t think of anything nice to say, you’re not allowed to say anything at all.

Still, a deep fascination remains. If I happen to be ever in possession of tater tots, and a little ground beef (not turkey, probably not ever going to be able to face ground turkey, you can search the archives for something called Soup of Satan) I might see what can be seen. But I will do it alone, in the dead of night, illicitly, and you will never hear about it, because, well, I happen to know that the Internet is very public, and life isn’t that short….