At least his favorite dish wasn't another man's meat?

Poor, poor Rick...there's no shame in accepting used pasta! Well, not much more shame than you already have, of course.

Wow, that was a pretty spectacular last panel. Stacked punchlines. Well done.

So is there any casserole left? I'm kinda famished at the moment,
and even the vegan-ized remains are starting to sound good...

Panel 4 is so great. I laughed like an idiot.

I love Hunter Thompson references in Scott/Rick conversations! I still remember the one about the combover.

No, what's disturbing is Rick being desirous of another man's "noodle."

This really made me laugh.

Rick isn't as stupid as I thought - he can recognise the benefits of Scott's not talking to him

Rick: The living proof that there is no such thing as "rock bottom".

"My favourite dish is another man's noodles" - coming soon to a Tshirt near you...

Another Man's Noodles

...new band name? >_>

Why would you bring casserole to work, but only eat the meat?

Wait a minute. What the hello kind of a casserole has noodles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casserole

Not mentioned. Noodleless.

All right. What ingredIent could a coworker mistake for noodles? Very badly damaged lasagne? As in, cracked lengthwise...

I will tell you now, ramen is -not- casserole.

Awesome; I even snorted.

"another man's noodles" LOVE IT! lol

Now I want to know what kind of casserole it is.... :\

Robert Carnegie: Second paragraph says "pasta" and the picture features a macaroni casserole. As we can see from the macaroni page on all-knowing wikipedia, macaronis is, indeed, a noodle.

Mmmm...Soylent Green Casserole. Maybe Rick is better off with just the noodles!

Whoa. Rick scored a point against Scott. And knows it.

Tuna-noodle casserole is a standard in my area, but of course it doesn't have meat.

Is it just me, or is Rick talking a little like Scott in panel 4? Maybe he's rubbing off on him? Or vise-versa?

@Robert Carnegie: Tuna casserole (perhaps the archetypical casserole)is usually made with egg noodles. Granted canned tuna is stretching the concept of "meat" pretty thin.

Robert Carnegie- I think this might be an American-to-English translation thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodle
Apparently, noodles are strips or shapes made from unleavened dough, so pasta is a type of noodle- although here in the UK 'noodle' specifically refers to Oriental styles. If someone refered to spaghetti as 'noodles' they would get some rather odd looks.
Pasta is apparently a fairly standard ingredient in what are called casseroles, but again over here something made with pasta and baked is called a 'pasta bake' (who says the British are unimaginative cooks?!)

Most of the receipies I found just call for 'egg noodles', but the pictures look like they're using what I would call pasta. Then again, others do look like oriental noodles.

And I have now written and thought the word 'noodle' so often it has ceased to sound real...
Noodlenoodlenoodlenoodlenoodle....

Rick is employed? What kind of work is suitable for Rick? Perhaps a 911 operator, "you think you got problems ..."

Robert, your Wikipedia page says that a casserole includes "a starchy binder such as flour, potato, or pasta..." and the Wikipedia page for pasta begins, "Pasta is a type of noodle..."

Ergo, many casseroles have noodles.

All y'all are overthinking the concept of "casserole." The idea is, you get a lot of Midwestern Protestants in a church basement, they put a bunch of random junk in a pan and put cheese on it, and bake it.

Robert Carnegie - I was in my thirties before I learned that there were casseroles that didn't have noodles. This suggests that the man who brought the casserole in has a Jewish mother, which is why he brings casserole to work (food is definitely part of the culture. If you're not feeding someone, you hate that person)

I'm assuming tuna noodle casserole has noodles.

@jsc

As a friend of mine once said, "I was raised a Lutheran, which means I believe in covered dishes containing Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup."

@Dee

But if the man's casserole was made by a Jewish mother, and contained meat, that would imply that it does not also contain cheese, and who on earth would be willing to eat a casserole (or indeed anything else) that did not contain cheese? I think I tried something that did not contain cheese once, and almost lost the will to live.

Scott, please remember that some of your fans are gay people.

Note from Scott: Yeah, I was focusing on the noodles, not the "man." "Another person's noodles" didn't sound as dramatic, and took up more room (you'd be amazed how many of my lines get rewritten to take up less room). If I had been going for the homophobic joke, there are other food items that would have sold the joke better.

I intended no gay joke, but you clearly perceived one. I want you to be comfortable reading my comic, and I'll try to put more thought into possible double-meanings.

Now I'm curious: what does 'another man's noodles' mean?

Note from Scott: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. "Another Man's Noodles" means the discarded noodle's from another person's partially eaten casserole.

@ anon: Even if it did have the double-meaning, then so what? That doesn't make it "homophobic" in the sense of "gay hating," only in the sense of "questioning one's own sexuality." A sudden realization of such a thing would be disturbing indeed.

Scott, don't self-censor. If it's funny, put it out there. That's one of the benefits, I think, of having many characters. You can put the unpopular opinions in the mouths of others, Archie Bunker style.

@ Scott: You are the king of double meanings! They're what make your strip so hilarious. Just to be clear, in this case it wasn't the double meaning of "another man's noodles" that bothered me, but that it was followed immediately by "I don't want to talk to you anymore." So if you saw the same double meaning I did, (Rick questioning his orientation,) you then saw it met with rejection by a friend. And I read the comic on National Coming Out Day, so that added another layer. Anyhow, that's all just to give a full explanation of why it struck me as it did. Thanks for your thoughtful response--and for Basic Instructions!

Note from Scott: I can see how you could read it that way. Thanks for giving me the chance to explain.

I guess I see the problem. To me, those are British foods with specific English-language names such as lasagna and spaghetti bolognese. Whereas to an American diner, lasagna is a type of noodle casserole. But this difference isn't important; what matters is who's right.

And ramen, as I understand, is noodles without anything.

If I might be pragmatic: No man wants his manhood to be referred to as a "noodle".

Scott's closing line is interestingly similar to one of John Cleese's lines as the French Taunter in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": "I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal-food-trough wiper."

The similarity is especially eerie in light of the connection between the second half of the Cleese line and the subject matter of this cartoon.