Casseroles & Despair

Grief, it seems, abounds this week, and I suppose we’re the tiniest bit lucky that it already coincides with a very casserole-heavy one.

November 23, 2022

It’s becoming a pretty regular occurrence these days for me: I wake up, roll over, and instead of pouring more internet despair into my eyeballs immediately, I find a newsletter that makes me want to write to you instead. It happened again today. 

This time, it was Lyz Lenz’s excellent Men Yell At Me, which I’ve waxed affectionately about before, usually because she’s really mad about a lot of things and it makes me feel less alone in that. She did it again today, only it was about grief and casseroles and it made me cry. In her letter, “The Eternal Comfort of the Casserole,” she talks about how baking dishes full of whatever-the-fuck can sustain us in moments of deep pain or deep joy, through death and birth, and all the things in between. 

“2007 was the year of the casserole. I made a sausage ziti casserole in my mother-in-law’s large empty kitchen, in the house where my father-in-law lay dying. As I layered the sausage and noodles with red sauce and sour cream, I could hear him moaning in pain upstairs. I remember those casseroles specifically because, in those days of grief, we did not order out.

I didn’t understand it then. But I think I understand now. In a time of loss, she wanted something that would hold. She wanted a casserole.”

This especially tugs at my heart, since 2007 was also my year of the casserole, specifically a gigantic aluminum pan of baked ziti that kept me alive through the week before my own father died. I have no idea who made it, but I actually owe them my life. 

Grief, it seems, abounds this week, and I suppose we’re the tiniest bit lucky that it already coincides with a very casserole-heavy one. 

I want, of course, to talk to you about the hate crime at Club Q in Colorado Springs this week. I want to talk to you about the intersection of it feeling safer than ever to be queer and also more dangerous than ever. I want to talk to you about this country’s sick addiction to violence and to protecting our right to perpetrate it. But I realize that I’ve already started this letter before. Actually, several times. And it feels prescient to share that with you, if only to emphasize how brutally repetitive this story is. 

May 24th, 2022 – 9:05pm

There is not, as is often the case when I sit down to write to you, anywhere near an adequate place to start. 

We are all, obviously, dealing with a lot. We have been since Flynn and I started this newsletter. We have been since before Flynn and I knew each other. Since before either of us were around to look off into the distance and say, “Fuck, man,” to ourselves or each other with such incredible frequency. 

Fuck, man. 

I think that by signing up for a newsletter called Soup & Despair, you are aware of what you are going to get, but because I am acutely aware of how much like an exposed wire so many of us feel like right now, I want to offer you our first ever Content Warning: I can’t talk about this week without talking about gun violence, racism, and politicians from both New York’s 21st Congressional District and from Texas’ whole fuckin thing.

If you read that and thought to yourself, “I actually do not have space for any more of that right now, please let me know when you have something fun to say,” – I completely understand. Please scroll all the way to the bottom for a recipe and a playlist. Take care of yourself and hug the people you love. 

For the rest of you, I am sorry that you are also Like This(TM), but goddamn, at least we are together. 

On May 15, 2022 at 8:26pm, I wrote this sentence: “They just went to the grocery store.” 

That sentence, in the grand tradition of “fuck, man,” was all I could muster when thinking about the massacre in a Buffalo, NY supermarket on May 14th. I was, and continue to be, fixated on the idea that 10 people, all Black, were just going about their regular lives, trying either to buy food or just be at work, when a man came to kill them and destroy their families. 

And then today, at 7:00pm, when I saw the news that 18 elementary school students and one teacher in Uvalde, Texas had been killed by a man who came to kill them and destroy their families, I thought about what the last week of elementary school feels like. They were counting down the days until summer vacation, probably thinking about swimming and sleeping late, and eating popsicles. Maybe some of them were excited for summer camp. Now, there are 18 destroyed families who will never think about summer vacation the same way ever again, and an entire school of traumatized children (not to mention the adults) who survived.  

The question of whether or not US lawmakers would take action to corral this nation’s sick addiction to gun violence and the people who profit off of it was unfortunately and clearly answered in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012: No. No they wouldn’t. They could have. But they wouldn’t. I worked in the Huffington Post newsroom that day, and I’ll always remember how it felt — it was the first time I couldn’t escape a national tragedy by turning off the tv or the radio. I couldn’t close twitter and walk away to get some fresh air, I was surrounded by 50 TV monitors playing every single angle of news coverage about the massacre, while watching my colleagues try to write news stories about it. I had a panic attack at work that day, like a lot of people probably did, just thinking about it — about how it must have felt there, about the survivors’ trauma, about the inability to feel safe as a child in America, as a parent, as a person. That infinitesimally small fraction of the pain any of the families actually touched by that tragedy felt was enough to make me change careers, move cities, reconsider starting a family.

I couldn’t finish this thought in May. It was too raw and I was too angry and too tired. I’m no less angry, but I am a little bit better rested now, in November. I actually don’t have any hope that this issue is going to be solved at a policy level. That hope melted away years ago, but never more than looking at this list.

We live in a place where it’s not safe to be yourself. It’s not safe to be trans. It’s not safe to keep your “lifestyle” to the privacy of a queer bar. It’s not safe to be Black. It’s not safe to go to the grocery store. It’s not safe to go to the movies. It’s not safe to go to a concert. It’s not safe to go to school. It’s not safe, even, to be a kid. 

WHAT will it take for the people who profit off of this violence — either in literal capital or in political capital — to take aggressive action? WHO has to feel unsafe? Do we all need combat training? Do we all need to be able to recognize tactical body armor and know where the handle on it is to bring down a deranged person determined to bring horror into a place of joy? Do we all need to be able, as a transwoman was in Club Q, to grind our heels into murderers at drag shows? Is this, actually, how they want us to live? 

It turns out, I’m not well-rested enough to answer that one. 

In the absence of prevention, we can only help in the aftermath. We can only hug our people. We can only feed each other. We can only bring casseroles. I know that I, for one, am going to feed the fuck out of them tomorrow, and on and on for as long as I can. Big love from here to there. I’ll let Lyz Lenz sign us off.

“The day my father-in-law moved into hospice, I sat on the stairs with my mother-in-law, staring at the front door, knowing he’d never pass through that passageway again. Together we cried. And when she’d had enough grief, my mother-in-law stood up, wiped her face with her hands, and wiped those hands on her pants, and then she went to the kitchen and made a chicken tetrazzini casserole.”

I Did, In Fact, Make You A Playlist: “The Great Molasses Flood of 2022” on Apple Music

I never actually got to eat green bean casserole on Thanksgiving as a kid. My parents, who were both great cooks, were occupied by other things — homemade rolls, pies in abundance, sweet potato puree that has changed lives. Like chicken tetrazzini and meatloaf, I’d have to discover the joy of green bean casserole on my own, at some friend’s house, wide-eyed with wonder at something everyone else thought was completely normal — a can of green beans, a can of cream of mushroom soup, French’s fried onions. Now that I’m grown and get to eat what I want for this annual feast, I use fresh green beans and I make my own mushroom sauce. But do no — I repeat DO NOT — spend your time frying your own shallots or whatever. French’s fried onions, like Heinz ketchup, are actually perfectly engineered. Just use them. I love you.

Green Bean Casserole

1 lb. green beans1 lb. mushrooms, chopped finely (I like a mix of creminis and shiitakes, but any combination will do)4 big shallots, chopped finely2 sprigs sage, chopped finely2 sprigs rosemary, chopped finely6ish sprigs thyme, chopped finely 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter2-3 Tbsp. floura glass of dry white wine1 - 1 1/2 c. half and half (or heavy cream if you wanna get wild)1 6 oz. container French’s fried onionssalt and black pepper to taste

Blanch your green beans in heavily salted water, until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes. Shock them in ice-cold water to keep them bright green and crisp. I like to chop mine into 1-inch pieces once they’re cool and drained.

Melt 2 Tbsp. of the butter in a wide, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Cook the shallots until they’re translucent and softening, about 5 minutes. Add the chopped mushrooms to the pot, and cook them until they give up all their water — the type of mushrooms you use will dictate how long this takes, I cooked mine for probably 15 minutes, stirring often. Add the herbs and cook for another minute or two, until it smells really good. Add 2 Tbsp. of the flour, and stir vigorously to coat all the mushrooms, cooking for a minute or two, until the pot gets dry and sizzly. If it seems too wet still, add another bit of flour and repeat.

Add the wine to the pan (give or take a few sips, if you feel like it), scraping any caramelized bits from the bottom. Let it reduce for a minute or two, then slowly add the half and half, stirring constantly, until it starts to bubble and thicken just slightly. It’s very important to salt and pepper this to taste now, making it just slightly saltier than you think it should be, because the green beans will suck up a lot of the flavor. (You can do everything up to this point a few days in advance to save you some time on the day. I like to store the sauce and the green beans separately so no one gets soggy.)

To finish the casserole, combine the green beans and the mushroom sauce in a baking dish (or in the pot you cooked the mushroom sauce in, if it’s oven-safe and you hate extra dishes). Cover with foil, and pop it in a 350º oven for 15 minutes, then uncovered for 5 or 10, until it’s bubbling and just barely starting to brown on the edges. Top with the fried onions and feast with the ones you love.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a (sometimes) weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!

Reply

or to participate.