A casserole may be just what we need to forget the news - The Globe and Mail

Mar 14, 2025

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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie

I walked with my mother along the creek and back. Talking about things that don’t really matter, with the major underlying attribute that they do. The weather and our family dog’s bowel movements weave meticulously into politics and vaccinations, cancer and appointments. Not in a purposefully awful way, just in a matter of fact way. She’ll be 70 this year, in her 10th year of remission from lymphoma, something that has defined her sense of self more than I’ll probably ever be able to understand. I know she doesn’t want the conversation to lean in that way, deep down, but often it does. Our conversations about big, global, often scary things give us a feeling of power over them but also a few minutes of anxiousness and longing.

My favourite parts of our walks together are when the conversation happens to meander to meatier moments and memories. That’s when I become quiet, willing her to say more with my silence. The parts when she tells me she and her friends were glued to Saturday Night Live’s first season. Or when she and her girlfriends took a road trip to California. The times when she mentions she purchased an outfit from Holt Renfrew, very luxurious, after her first marriage ended, describing the overlay of the black on black fabric, the subtle texture changes, and how she eventually got rid of the dress because it reminded her too much of that moment in time. These are the times when I can see myself in her the most.

Sometimes we share what we had for dinner, a topic so far away from the universe of cancer and trade tariffs; safe in its secret recipes, or, better still, no recipes at all. The stories told about what had to be used up in the fridge to provide a wonderful dinner; how nothing, or close to it, became something beautiful.

Like most days, after our walk, she sends me home with mountains of the magical leftovers she had earlier described.

Mom only knows how to make one size of casserole: extra large. She stores leftovers in the garage fridge, where it will live for up to a week. My leftovers are placed into an old Tupperware container that has the family name written in marker on the outside.

Inside, is a mixture of cream cheese, low-fat cheddar cheese, long egg noodles, bread crumbs and a melee of diced vegetables and ham. The scent that hits first is the onion and garlic, the smell of home and then some. The peppers come next, sweet and smoky all at once. The broccoli is seen before it is smelled, my favourite nibble. Peas added for posterity, but more so because the freezer probably needed a clean out before the new run of spring and summer produce arrives. And ham. For as much as many people say no to pork, my parents still say yes. And thank goodness for that. Need we take every delicious thing away from this world?

The cream cheese, cheddar and (I am sure) some type of canned soup and milk, entwine the enclave of colour: a prism of my childhood. Casseroles were created on a whim of weeknight rush and necessity. But they are a dying breed if there ever was one – taken over by food delivery and constant access to restaurants that never close. The most common of dishes has become something of culinary lore.

My mother’s casserole has always been a hit. No recipe is involved, the same casserole may never be repeated, but it’s always a blessing between the lips. Always filling, always special. Not only due to the love and nutrition she bakes into it, but by the power she gives the dish by the tale spins around it.

“I took this overdue can of mushroom soup and added it to the broccoli so and so gave us,” she might say, or, “The noodles were from when you made Valentine’s boxes to give away, they were still good. Rome was built on those noodles!” And even some advice: “Evaporated milk is as good as any milk, and it doesn’t split.”

But my favourite is how she shares her casserole recipe: “Just take what you are able, and put it together. It doesn’t have to be perfect to taste good.”

This is a lesson we all could use during these times.

In a world constantly telling us how to live, how to be healthy, what we should consume, how we should consume it, and how doing so makes us better: be a casserole.

Just take what you are able and put it together. It doesn’t have to be perfect to taste good. Happiness and life are not about the things, they are about the whole; it is not about one moment, but many. It is not just about what you are serving, but about the stories you tell around the table. In 2025, serve a casserole. Make “nothing” into something beautiful.

Breanna McDonald lives in Kelowna, B.C.