Transcript of “He Began to Wonder When the Hot Dish’s Measurements Were Nine by Thirteen”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Well, hello. This is Cher Lindbergh.
I’m from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but I have a cabin in Amory, Wisconsin.
So I live in two worlds.
What’s on your mind?
Well, I live in Minneapolis, and I’m born and raised in the Midwest.
And a hot dish to us Scandinavians is what the rest of the country calls a casserole.
It’s any kind of a mixture of, it could be anything from rice and hamburger to noodles.
But it’s a hot casserole, and we call it a hot dish.
So I came across another definition from the new pastor of my church in Minneapolis, Unity Minneapolis.
He was from Alabama, born and raised in Alabama.
And the reason I noticed there was a difference is I, in front of the church, to welcome this brand-new pastor from Alabama who had, he was, I think, in his 50s or 60s when he started in Minneapolis.
I told a joke in front of the entire congregation to welcome him.
And the joke went like this.
There were three people that were friends, and they were in the car, and they died in a car crash.
So all three of them went up to the pearly gates at the same time.
And the first one saw St. Peter at the pearly gates, and St. Peter looked at the woman and said, so what makes you think you deserve to get into heaven?
And the woman said, well, I’m a Catholic and I have these rosary beads and I use them so often to count my Hail Marys.
My rosary beads are so worn, they’re practically falling apart.
And St. Peter looks at her and says, all right, you’re in.
So the next one that arrived at the pearly gates was a man.
And St. Peter says, well, what makes you think you should get into heaven?
And this guy says, well, I’m a Baptist and I have a Bible.
And when I read my Bible, I read it so much that the words are worn and the pages are falling out.
So St. Peter says, all right, you’re in.
And the third one was a woman.
St. Peter said, what makes you think you can get into heaven?
And she said, well, I’m Lutheran.
And I know that it’s only by the love and the grace of God that you can get into heaven.
Just in case, I brought a hot dish.
Meaning a casserole, right?
Okay, so the whole congregation laughed, and this poor Alabama minister is befuddled going, because in the South, a hot dish is a scantily clad female, attractive female.
They call him a hot dish.
Right.
So he couldn’t figure out, how is this scantily clad female going to help this woman get into heaven?
And he’s just amazed.
So later on, he tells us, could you explain that joke?
He wanted me to explain the joke, and when I did, and he told us what he was expecting, we just howled even more.
So my question is, is it just the Midwest?
It’s the enunciation to it.
We call it a hot dish, meaning a casserole, not a hot dish.
Like one word.
And in the South, they call it a hot dish.
And that’s my question.
I didn’t hear that growing up when I was in Kentucky.
I’m wondering what you use in a hot dish.
What do you put in those?
It’s often cream of mushroom soup, hamburger, green beans, tater tots on top.
It’s often a starch, like noodles or rice or potatoes mixed with some kind of meat in a cream sauce.
It’s usually a moist dish, like a casserole.
I guess that’s what I would say.
Yeah.
Those are all known to me from Missouri, but we didn’t call them hot dishes.
They were just casseroles.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And you’ll find some arm wrestling online about whether one should call that a hot dish or a casserole.
People have really strong opinions about that.
They do.
This is mostly Minnesota and maybe a few of the surrounding states, Martha, but mostly Minnesota.
Right, yeah.
I mean, to me, a hot dish is just a hot dish with a hot food in it.
But there’s a way to say it, and I think I hear Cher saying it.
It’s not a hot dish.
It’s hot dish.
Hot dish.
Hot dish.
Yeah, almost like it’s one word, right?
It is one word.
It is one word.
It is one word.
Yeah, in the cookbooks, it’s one word, hot dish.
There was a survey conducted in 1986, supposedly, that recorded 3,732 different hot dish recipes in Minnesota.
There you go.
Most of them have cream of mushroom.
Cream of mushroom soup is one of the main ingredients.
Yeah, the Campbell’s people are happy.
They are thrilled.
Well, thank you so much, Cher, for your call.
We really appreciate it.
And that joke is funny.
I’m sure your pastor, he’s like, okay, I know I found a good bunch here.
This was a pleasure.
Okay.
Bon appetit.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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