We love to have family and friends over for a food, whether it is a big elaborate event or dessert and coffee. No matter the occasion, we relish time around the kitchen table enjoying something delicious. When my husband and I married, some 42 years ago, I knew nothing about how to really prepare a meal or how to cook much of anything. If you told me all those years ago that I’d turn into the cook I am today I would have laughed! That first year in the kitchen was a crazy adventure!
We were married in October and with my limited skills I decided I wanted to cook the Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, only one month later! I’d never cooked a turkey, mashed potatoes, or any of the other delights usually seen on the holiday table but I was young and dumb and willing! I decided it had to be fancier than usual and bought myself a holiday copy of Bon Appetit magazine. The cover showed a luscious turkey sitting on a silver tray surrounded by beautiful dishes of whipped potatoes, green beans, freshly baked rolls, and a pitcher of warm cider. Several pumpkin and pecan pies sat in the background next to a bowl of homemade whipped cream. The table was set with fine china and crystal, pressed linen napkins, and silver bowls. You could almost smell the savory and sweet aromas coming right off the cover!
After much research, I decided to make a roast turkey stuffed with mincemeat dressing, Duchess potatoes, homemade green bean casserole, and fresh cloverleaf rolls. Dessert would be pecan pie and wassail. I wasn’t even sure what some of these items were but if it was good enough for Bon Apetit, it was good enough for me and my family!
I barely knew anything about the kitchen and we lived in a teeny-tiny house with an ancient gas oven and four burner gas cooktop. The pilot light on the gas stove would blow out all the time and the whole house would smell like natural gas – it is a wonder we didn’t blow ourselves up accidentally! I grew up with an electric oven and stovetop so even using this gas oven/stove combination was an adventure! Our Frigidaire refrigerator had a small freezer inside that was usually so frozen over with ice that you couldn’t get much inside it except a few ice trays.
Days before the big holiday I went to several grocery stores and found all of my ingredients. We were college students who barely had enough money to eat regular food, let alone all this fancy stuff, so I am sure I put us in a bit of a compromising financial position for the rest of the month.
The big day came and I started cooking…..
There were greasy, damp recipe pages all over my stifling kitchen – oh, yes, I forgot to mention that we lived in Florida in a house without air conditioning. The one window in our tiny kitchen opened onto a screened porch and provided exactly zero circulation. I was sweating like a farm animal and about to pass out most of the day from heat strain but I powered through.
I made the mincemeat stuffing and it looked, quite simply, disgusting. My dad always expressed an interest in mincemeat so I reminded myself that this was for him and it didn’t really matter what it looked like because Bon Apetit had assured me that it would surely be delicious. I crammed the disgusting stuffing inside the bird and put the whole mess in the oven. The bird actually looked good covered in butter, salt, and pepper so I was feeling fine!
On to the potatoes, green beans, rolls, etc. I was definitely in over my head at this point but, again, powering through. In my brain I am hearing this very loudly:
Lots of people coming over …… got to get this done ….. got to keep going …. what the hell was I thinking …….. it’s Thanksgiving ….. it’s the most important meal of the year ….. people are depending on me …….. oh.my.gosh.
Internally freaking out, externally sweating like a man. Oh, this was coming together to be a huge disaster!
Potatoes, green beans, and rolls, oh my! I got to work on the next parts of the meal. Trying to make a homemade white sauce with roasted mushrooms, and cleaning green beans. Scrubbing and peeling potatoes, and letting dough rise. You’d be correct if you are assuming the rising dough happened pretty quickly because of the god-awful heat in our kitchen. In fact, it rose so well, that it spilled out of the bowl and all over the counter when I wasn’t looking. Sticky, wet dough oozing all over my 1950’s formica counter tops. Dang it! I smooshed all the dough back into the bowl, AKA: punched the dough down as the recipe stated, and started rolling the dough into little balls to make cloverleaf rolls. They looked very pretty – finally, something working out pretty well! The rolls were to rise a second time, so I put them in their pan on our tiny kitchen table for the second rise and finished up the other sides.
The next time I made eye contact with the rolls they were HUGE! They were creeping out from under the tea towel on top of them and starting a second oozing process!
Duchess potatoes are nothing more than mashed potatoes piped onto a cookie sheet, then baked in the oven until they are slightly golden brown. This one was easy! Done and done! And cooked about 2 hours too early!
The green bean casserole was sitting on the back of the stove waiting for its turn in the oven but looking a little soupy so I (stupidly) added a slurry (flour and water mixture used to thicken foods) which immediately turned the whole mess to glue.
So, let’s recap: there’s a turkey in the oven with disgusting stuffing inside of it; rolls that keep growing exponentially larger by the minute; a glue and green bean casserole; and some mashed potatoes that look decent. Makes your mouth water doesn’t it? Happy freaking holidays!!!!
It was a Thanksgiving dinner we will never forget and not because it was delicious! The turkey came out of the oven way too early and was underdone, the potatoes were good but cold, the green beans could have been used to install wallpaper, the rolls were kind of good (a true highlight of the day!), and I don’t even remember if the pies were made. Nothing says Happy Holidays like a raw turkey and some rolls that were “kind of good.”
What did I learn?
-Life is about as hard as we choose to make it. (I chose to make it really hard that day!)
-Some things should never be changed because they are pretty good as they are. (Simplify!)
-Holidays, and all meals, are about who sits around your table not what you eat. (Hooray for family and good friends!)
-Fun is more important than just about anything. (Whether in the kitchen or anywhere else!)
-Stressing about the small stuff is really just pointless. (Really, really pointless!)
I’ve got a lot of college degrees and I am here to tell you that there are times in life when all the academic knowledge you have isn’t worth crap! This day, and this meal, are great examples!
Next holiday, just have fun!
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