Enough with the Breading

Last night I had a familiar experience, well two familiar experiences. First I had an entire meal, three items, all cooked casserole style and all topped with cheese and breading of some sort. I have been reassured time and time again that this is Southern cooking. Truthfully I have had Southern cooking like this, but I’ve also had modern, fresh, and delicious Southern cooking. Second, I spent an entire evening with The Professor’s younger friends, the ones looking to buy an RV and travel the world, or whatever.

A little after noon we got a call from Miss RV asking if they could come over for dinner, and she would cook. Apparently they have a deadbeat sleeping on their couch and they needed a break. We agreed and set a time of 7pm, she called back and said it would be more like 5:30. The menu consisted of chicken casserole, (made with chicken in a can) which had crumbled Ritz crackers as its breading, broccoli casserole which reminded me that even broccoli when prepared a certain way could actually stop your heart, and green bean casserole (although I never remembered seeing an actual green bean). There was also chicken gravy in a can which was heated over my stove while still in the can.

I don’t want to sound snooty, or critical, or judgey, but I guess am a bit judgey. Once everything was cooked and served up, it all looked the same. Everything had breading on the top. Everything had a cream-of-blank filling, mixed with cheese and mayo.
To top it off Miss RV got drunk on our booze. We had said we’d have the drinks, because we already had some alcohol in the house and with the little notice we got there was little time to go to the store (because we live in the middle of nowhere). In total we had some nice bottles of wine given to us at our wedding, some whiskey, some scotch, some vodka, and some mixers.

Before I got a chance to offer, she asked for some wine. Then during a conversation she found out I had Bailys and asked me to make her a drink. “But you still have some wine, do you want me to wait?” was my reply. She responded, “Oh, I’ll just chug this down.” Which she then proceeded to do. After the Bailys drink, she made a vodka drink, then another. Then finished the bottle of wine as we sat down to eat. None of this bothered me, she is young, she is having a good time. C’est la vie. But then she got up from the table, fumbled around in our wine area, and came back with an opened bottle of our wedding wine, with the card still taped to it, and proceeded to water it down with ice cubes and drink it down. Appalled.

Oh, and at one point she asked how much older than her I was, when I responded she said surprised, “wow, I thought you were much older than that.” Awesome.