Another One From an Elder Bachelor

posted March 24, 2009
  by Josh Gunn, Bachelor Chow

As I reported last week, I've been traveling quite a bit lately. My second stop was at the Minneapolis home of my graduate school advisor, Bob Scott, who has developed quite the repertoire of single-guy recipes. I've already shared his mother's delicious cookie recipe that he continues to make (check it out!).

This week, I continue the tradition of one Donn Parson, a graduate student in the early 1960s at the University of Minnesota. Parson is now a distinguished professor of Communication at the University of Kansas. As a graduate student bachelor, however, Parson was known to be quite the cook, and my advisor and his late wife begged for his "Million Dollar Casserole" recipe until he relented. Parson's recipe is simple to make, but tastes delightful. It works well as a main dish or a side dish, and it features one of the most delicious foods unique to the United States: wild rice!

I asked my mentor why Parson thought his casserole was worth a million bucks. "Two reasons," said Scott, "the price of chicken; and the price of rice. " Scott explained that in the wake of the great depression, chicken was an expensive meat that lower and middle-class families couldn’t afford. If you were known to have "chicken on Sunday," then you knew you had made it to the upper-class. "Remember," Scott said, "the phrase 'a chicken in every pot?'"

"Uh, no." I answered.

Well, apparently the Republican Party used it as a slogan in 1928. It's often misattributed to Herbert Hoover. And given how expensive chicken seems to have become this year, I reckon the phrase is ripe for political reappropriation.

As for the rice, well, its cost is attributed to the fact that it used to be hand gathered. Wild rice grows naturally in Minnesota, and for decades Indian tribes of that region had the exclusive right to gather and sell it. Recently, the rice has been farmed and grown in paddies (which makes "wild rice" an oxymoron, I reckon). Nevertheless, wild rice in Minnesota used to be pricey, and combined with the cost of chicken, one can understand why Parson dubbed his recipe "Million Dollar Casserole."


Don Parson's Million Dollar Casserole Recipe
http://www.cdkitchen.com/


Serves/Makes: 4
Ready in: 1-2 hrs

* 1 cup wild rice
* 2 cups water
* 1/2 cup chopped celery
* 1 carton (12 oz size) sour cream
* 1 can cream of mushroom soup *
* 12 ounces canned chicken **

Bring water to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Then, steam rice, water, and celery for about 30 minutes. Drain well.

Pour rice into casserole dish. Mix in sour cream, soup, and chicken.

Bake uncovered for one hour at 350 degrees F.

* if you have fresh mushrooms, you can chop 1 cup and use cream of chicken soup

** in place of canned chicken substitute chopped, cooked chicken breast

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