This Thanksgiving, along with family, friends and happiness, there is also one more thing I am going to be thankful for: the insane amount of food I am going to consume.
I have been waiting and waiting for this day to come for the 12 weeks. I’ve been cooking on my own. While I am starting to actually enjoy moving around the kitchen and preparing different meals, this day will be a day of joy and relief.
Of course, I will still help with the dishes and preparation, but that is only a small sacrifice I am more than willing to make in exchange for the food.
There will be so much food at my family dinner, I honestly don’t think I can wait. In light of the holiday and the excitement, I would like to make sure I say a few things.
I apologize to the professors during whose classes I will be daydreaming of turkey and mashed potatoes. I apologize to my mother, who will be extremely annoyed with me when I wake her up at the crack of dawn so we can head to my grandparents’ for dinner.
I will not, however, be sorry for anyone who gets to eat my “famous” green bean casserole.
Maybe it’s not famous to anyone else, but it is one of my favorite things to make.
A few years ago around Thanksgiving, there was a commercial in which people would ring the doorbell and say, “I brought the green bean casserole.” One year, I decided that instead of drooling over the crescent rolls in the oven, I would be helpful and be the one who “brought the green bean casserole.”
The directions were on the back of the french onion box, so it was pretty easy to find a recipe. I dumped the green beans, cream of mushroom soup, milk and pepper into a casserole dish and mixed it up. Right before I decided that my dish was going to be perfect, I asked myself what could step this up to the next level. The answer was simple.
Cheese.
I sprinkled some cheese on the middle and top layers of the casserole and threw it in the oven to bake. I put the french onions on and waited for my entire family to devour the casserole with a cheesy twist. Once the casserole was completely gone, I knew that I would be making this year after year at all of our big family gatherings.
The next year I mixed in the cheese instead of just putting a layer in the middle and I still added a layer on top.
This year, I plan on kicking it up to an even higher level. In my book, the next best thing to cheese is bacon.
I plan on cooking some bacon, cutting it up and throwing it in with the cheese. I don’t usually test this dish out before I make it. It goes in the oven and then comes out awesome.
However, with my recent experiments of trying to make things on my own not going well, I might reconsider and make a test casserole.
That way, my famous green bean casserole won’t become my infamous green bean casserole.
Mesha Baylis-Blalock is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University and a columnist for The Post. Do you make a killer green bean casserole? Email Mesha at mb345109@ohiou.
