Slow-Cooked Vegetables with Cheese Sauce

Easter. But not Easter — not the church kind, not the family kind, not the Gayle-in-her-good-coat kind. Easter at home, just the six of us, because the church is closed and Gayle is behind her screen door and the virus does not observe holidays. I hid eggs in the yard for Josie because Josie is ten and ten is the last year you can hide eggs without the child feeling patronized, and this is the last year, and the last year of anything deserves to be honored, even if the honoring happens in a pandemic in a yard in Nebraska with plastic eggs filled with jelly beans.

Josie found all twenty-four eggs in eleven minutes, which is either exceptional egg-hunting or mediocre egg-hiding, and the answer is probably both. Tyler helped by standing in the yard and pointing, which is not helpful and which Josie did not appreciate and which made Justin laugh, and Justin laughing during the pandemic is a sound I collect the way other people collect stamps — rare, valuable, worth preserving.

I called Gayle. I FaceTimed her, which was a production because Gayle's relationship with technology is adversarial — she holds the phone at arm's length and speaks at it as if it is a small, difficult person, and the camera shows mostly ceiling and occasionally forehead. But I saw her face, and she saw mine, and the seeing was Easter, the only Easter that mattered — the resurrection of something as simple as a mother's face on a screen.

I made a ham — a small one, seven pounds, just for us, glazed with brown sugar and mustard. The ham was Easter dinner and Easter Monday sandwiches and Easter Tuesday soup. I brought a plate to Gayle's porch — ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, a roll. She took it inside. She called me an hour later and said the ham was good. The pause before 'good' held a cathedral of loneliness, and I heard it, and I said nothing, because the nothing was the only thing I had that fit in the space.

The scalloped potatoes on that plate — the ones I left on Gayle’s porch — were really just this: slow-cooked vegetables pulled together with a simple cheese sauce, the kind of dish that doesn’t ask much of you on a day when you don’t have much left to give. I’ve made it every Easter since, because it holds well, travels in foil without complaint, and because the smell of it cooking reminds me of that quiet year when feeding someone across a driveway was the whole of what love looked like.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 4 hrs | Total Time: 4 hrs 20 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 cups small broccoli florets
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots (about 3 medium)
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp paprika
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cheddar cheese soup
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Instructions

Layer the vegetables. Lightly coat the insert of a 6-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Layer in the sliced potatoes, carrots, corn, and onion. Scatter the garlic over the top and season with salt, pepper, and paprika.
Make the cheese sauce. In a medium bowl, whisk together the condensed cheddar cheese soup, sour cream, and milk until smooth. Stir in 1 cup of the shredded cheddar.
Combine. Pour the cheese sauce evenly over the vegetables. Dot the top with the small pieces of butter. Do not stir — the layers will meld during cooking.
Slow cook. Cover and cook on LOW for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, or until the potatoes are fork-tender and the carrots are cooked through. Avoid lifting the lid during the first 3 hours.
Add broccoli. In the last 30 minutes of cooking, scatter the broccoli florets over the top, replace the lid, and continue cooking until just tender but still bright.
Finish with cheese. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup cheddar over the top, replace the lid for 5 minutes to melt, then serve directly from the slow cooker.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Vegetables with Cheese Sauce — The Plate I Left on Her Porch