I got off the bus at the New London stop, in the middle of nowhere. When I told people at work where I was going to spend Thanksgiving, everyone reacted the same way: “There’s a New London in New Hampshire? Oh…” – then they nodded thoughtfully and moved on. I could tell that this town was going to be poppin’.
It was dark, and as I was waiting for the driver to hand me my backpack, I was reviewing in my head the list of things I had to do that night: make stuffing, make green bean casserole, prepare all ingredients for more cooking in the morning, try to get some sleep. Sleep had to be on the list, otherwise it might have gotten lost in the excitement. And excitement there was, once I got to the house where I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and I took in the perfect kitchen. The counter space seemed infinite, there was a large island in the middle, there were drawers with everything I could possibly think of, including a salad spinner (!) and a MANUAL EGG BEATER (OMG, when I saw that my eyes almost popped out of my head with enthusiasm – I had to place them back in with my fingers). I kept pulling out things from drawers, and yelping at their sight.
I wanted to put everything down and start cooking right away. Introductions? House tour? Changing into more comfy clothes? Who cares about that anyway?
Eventually I had to show that I was house- and people-trained. I got introduced to the owner of the house (my friend Corina’s boyfriend’s father), and to the house in general. The house was huge, I had a nice, small bedroom on one end, they had the master bedroom on the other end. The upper floor also had a fully equipped kitchen (in addition to the lower level one) and a bathroom for myself (the master bedroom had its own bathroom), so I felt like I couldn’t wish for anything more.
Except for time and space to cook.
I changed into comfy sweats and hoodie and, armed with my previously printed 5 page recipe list, I headed downstairs. Corina’s boyfriend, his son and his father stood at attention. Ok, they didn’t really, but they did tell me that I had free reign over the kitchen (actually they said that was “my kitchen,” which entertained some interesting fantasies of the time when I’ll be able to design my own perfect kitchen) and that they were there to do whatever I told them to. Now tell me it’s not every woman’s dream to hear that from not one, but three men surrounding her (feel free to overlook the fact that one of them was underage, the other one much overage, and the third one taken). So I started on the two dishes that I had planned for that evening: the stuffing and the green bean casserole. I figured that if I make the two dishes that we would need the oven for, that would give me enough time to screw up on the turkey in the morning.
I had everyone do something: clean and cut the green beans, clean and cut onion and celery, break some (a lot) of bread, and mix ingredients in bowls. I hope they felt included, and not exploited.
We ended up using a food processor to dice the onion and celery (between Corina’s giggles that they were turning into mush, and my pleading with her boyfriend to stop pressing the button), which was ok, because as it turns out, I slightly undercooked the onion before adding the bread to the mixture, so the smaller the pieces, the better, we decided post hoc.
Then I melted a stick of butter in a pot (Julia Child would be proud of me) and added everything in, leaving Corina to stir the stuffing while I dealt with the freshly cut green beans. Who knew the casserole would be so easy to make? You just open a couple of cans of mushroom soup, add the beans and some chicken broth, and there you are. I wanted to take it up a notch, so I added some cheese – Jenny told me I use cheese as a condiment, so I thought I would confirm her opinion. Then we stuck both dishes in the oven. They looked so good and endearing, it was all I could do not to run up for my camera (I left the picture-taking for the next day). Finally, by 1am we were all in bed, ready to sleep… The next day was the final challenge.