Although my parents claim to have loved us, there were all sorts of delicious foods that my sister and I knew our friends got to eat in their homes that we were denied in our own, glorious meal-like substances such as shake-and-bake chicken, hamburger helpers, sugar cereals with colorful marshmallows, and popcorn in that thing that unspirals itself and expands in the oven, like, whoa. Childhood was tough! Even now as (theoretically) an adult, I routinely hear about wondrous foods that I have never even once experienced, such as the broccoli-cheese casserole that someone (was it you?) requested I try my hand at earlier this year.
Unfamiliar with the dish, I asked around and it turns out, I really do seem the only person who has never had it. That said, among people I’ve interrogated, reviews are mixed. One friend gushed that it was the only way he’d eat broccoli growing up, another asked me to please bring it back in style, but the girl at the coffee shop this morning said it “smelled disgusting and was often made with Cheez-Whiz,” (sigh, another magical food on the Denied list). And it would be journalistically irresponsible for me not to mention that the dish was called out by name by Cook’s Illustrated founder Chris Kimball in a New York Times op-ed in the days after my beloved Gourmet magazine folded as an example of the web failing to live up to its promise. “Google ‘broccoli casserole’ and make the first recipe you find,” he challenged. “I guarantee it will be disappointing.”
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