Amy Klobuchar’s Hot Dish Recipe

Amy Klobuchar’s Taconite Tater Tot Hot Dish recipe is now available for all who remember when tater tots were not the enemy of school lunches that Michelle Obama has made them out to be in her campaign to bring health lunches to schools. Anyone else notice the irony of this “situation?”

30 Comments

TimK

about 13 years ago

Topofthehillman brings up several important points that need the kind of discussion that only PDD can provide. First of all, irony is what the water tastes like in Eveleth. The "Situation" and his pal Snooki have nearly ruined cable television. Do you really think that the merger of Comcast and NBC is going to fix that? I don't think so. But perhaps the lowly Tater Tot can solve all of our problems. We need a program in this country -- not unlike JFK's exhortation that we put a man on the moon in under a decade, to put us back on the right track. I propose a contest. We must develop a sweet potato Tater Tot. The winner would receive one million dollars (to be paid in $4000 annual installments). To pay for this prize, we can end the war in Afghanistan 10 minutes early.

topofthehillman

about 13 years ago

Ohh Timmy K!  Irony and sarcasm, all rolled up into one post.  You're the man!

secretseasons

about 13 years ago

I'm with TimK. What the hell is this post about? Are you seriously trying to make an anti-Obama point about healthy lunch food by pointing us to a hot dish full of cream of mushroom&chicken and cheese?

TimK

about 13 years ago

Hey, I'm serious about Sweet Potato Tater Tots. Someone needs to invent them NOW!

doubledutch

about 13 years ago

I completely gagged reading that recipe.

TimK, it can't be that hard.  This is how I would attempt it - just taking a stab in the dark.  Shred a couple sweet potatoes, mix with an egg and some bread crumbs, form into "tots" with, like, a mellon baller or something, and bake!  Try it - you invent them!

No Good Bum

about 13 years ago

I think you would want to bake the potatoes first, peel them, then you would put them in a food processor and pulse them until the potatoes are grainy in texture...then add the egg and bread crumbs, form into tots and bake.

Sherwood

about 13 years ago

When my mom had her Gall Bladder removed circa '89, the nice old neighbor lady from Virginia (her dad used to run the local movie theater there and died from all the carbon those reels used to put off) gave us a pan full of tater tot casserole, and the recipe.  My dad liked it so much we got to eat it what seemed like every day from that point forward.  That was maybe the worst culinary disaster in my family next to, I suppose, Slop On Top, which was very similar to TT Casserole, Succotash, Cream of Mushroom, Mashed Tatties.  The irony is my dad hates Mushrooms, but the only thing which really has mushroom flavor, is canned creamed mushrooms.  So I've hated hot dishes ever since. God damned Germans.

matty-pizza

about 13 years ago

Oh my gaawsh! She uses PEPPER JACK cheese! Spicy!!

butt mom

about 13 years ago

Sherwood, would you please share the recipes for Slop On Top and Mashed Tatties?

bluenewt

about 13 years ago

You can make a really good and actually healthy version of tater tot hot dish by using real potatoes (cut up and browned - with or without onions), cooked wild rice, green beans (skinny ones are best) and/or other veggies, a bit of shredded cheese (optional), and your own homemade roux rather than canned soup. Mix it up, put it in a casserole, bake it up. Yum!

A friend once accidentally called it Tater Tit Hotdosh, which strikes me as a much better name.

Sherwood

about 13 years ago

Well it was basically whatever crap was lying around in the fridge, whipped up with one creamed can of 'whatever you got' thrown on top of smashed potato.  I guess it kept me alive, but I'm getting a little sick thinking about it.  I'm glad Klobuchar's recipe has some ethnicity to it.  Saxons need every bit of help they can get.  My dad's idea of spicy is still medium hotness Pace Picante.  People forget things like real garlic, avocados, whole bean coffee weren't really even available in in most grocery stores until well into the 1980s.  'Export beer' consisted of Corona, Guinness, Heineken, Newcastle if you were lucky.

Lojasmo

about 13 years ago

Challenge:  learn the meaning of irony, and use it appropriately.  Thanks in advance.

Lojasmo

about 13 years ago

Oh, tater tots are fucking poison, literally.

Carla

about 13 years ago

I love you guys.
TimK and Nick are brilliant!

Jadiaz

about 13 years ago

i·ro·ny 
[ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
- noun 1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning 2. outcome contrary to expectations
- Related Form    i·ron·ic- adjective

I believe that the use was the second definition. As in it is ironic that the DFL Michelle Obama at the white house has said tater tots are bad, yet the DFL Klobuchar has won a contest despite expectations to the contrary by using the very food that has been deemed terrible by her DFL superior. So Lojasmo, please learn the definitions of irony before commenting on its use.

p.s. Tator Tots are not poison but delicious!

TimK

about 13 years ago

And the water in Eveleth does taste irony!

Herzog

about 13 years ago

All this talk of processed food reminds me of the classic 'The Road to Wellville,' about the inventor of the corn flake.  Sometimes I forget that Tater Titts weren't just growing on trees back in the caveman days. We take all these partially hydrogenated oils for granted nowadays.  If you wanted fat back then, you had to go carve some off the back of a giant beaver, and hang on for dear life.

edgeways

about 13 years ago

Jad, you do realize, regardless of whatever point is trying to be rammed home, "DFL" is a MN only term right? Ironic is being pedantic but not minding the pedantic details.

Lojasmo

about 13 years ago

@jadiaz:  That is not irony, moron.  That is two democrats who have differing opinions.

Lojasmo

about 13 years ago

And processed white potatoes+polyunsaturated fatty acids cooked at high heat, while possibly tasty, is indeed poison to the human animal.

Jadiaz

about 13 years ago

@Lojasmo Can you make a point without calling names? Cause it seems to me at least that you can't as you always throw one in. It's sad and makes me feel sorry for the anger you must have in your life. 

@Edge A Democrat is a Democrat is a Democrat. Same with Republicans. Only point I wanted to make was Michelle Obama as the OP pointed out is trying to do away with tator tots as being unhealthy, while a fellow party member is in the news winning a contest with them as a main ingredient in a pretty unhealthy casserole. As the OP stated, there is some irony in it.

@Lojasmo See how easy it is to not call names. You should try it sometime. Common courtesy is a great thing.

Carla

about 13 years ago

I thought Tea Partiers were RINO's.
Are they Republicans?

zra

about 13 years ago

TPINO...Tea Partiers In Name Only. Hence the obvious lack of the "T" behind the names of the likes of Michele Bachmann and the rest of her "caucus." (She still identifies herself as being a Republican, in case you dina notice.)

This weekend, one of the chief funders of the Tea Party "movement," the Koch Brothers are having a huge gathering of other monied folks, sans reporters or other media. The Koch and Tea Party "founder" Dick Armey's stated goal is for a takeover of the Republican Party by the Tea Party. 

To be sure, this party "for the common guy" is anything but. IMO, it's the biggest lie that's been foisted upon the American people since...well...politics.

secretseasons

about 13 years ago

Since it was a hot dish contest, it was bound to be unhealthy and disgusting and involve large quantities of cream, butter, and/or cheese.

Michelle Obama would probably lose a contest for best hot dish (or be disqualified, because this was a contest only among the Minnesota congressional delegation) and Amy Klobuchar would probably lose a contest for healthy school lunch food. 

Neither of these situations is "ironic." 

I can't believe I'm arguing with idiots on the internet.

Elvis

about 13 years ago

Jadiaz's equanimity was pretty brilliant anyway, and if people had a tenth of her repose and empathy, we wouldn't be in such an 'Us and Them' fix.

laurlalou

about 13 years ago

My dad's specialty was "Hogslop," which was instant mashed potatoes, plain ground beef with salt and pepper and canned corn and then you mixed it all together into what was also known as "Oool." Occasionally I would put a little Parmesan cheese on it, which was also known in our house as "cheese barf."

zra

about 13 years ago

I think Edge was merely making a point about your semantic faux pas. It's common, particularly among folk who haven't spent much time outside Minnesota.

Paul Lundgren

about 13 years ago



We gave Senator Klobuchar's recipe a try at the PDD Headquarters this past weekend (adding a red pepper and seasoning salt).

It's pretty good.

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