Green Bean Casserole is a Minnesota Thanksgiving staple—as
important as the turkey, the dressing, the mashed potatoes, the yams, and the
pumpkin pie. Okay, maybe not as important as the pie.
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| A Lime Jello Salad. Yes, it's a thing. |
Back in the 60s and 70s, the GBC was often the only
green thing on the table—unless someone brought a lime jello salad.
As usually constructed, GBC is a super easy dish: Two cans
of green beans, one can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, splash of milk. Mix
in a baking dish, top with one can of “French fried onions,” bake.
I never much liked it.
These days we get all fancy-schmancy. Our extended
family-and-friends potluck menu might include venison, goose, delicata squash,
wild rice, and multiple leafy green salads. Cousin Charlie will want me to mention his
broccoli salad here, and there will be at least one dish that I won’t be familiar
with, and cannot identify even after eating some. It will contain cheese. There will be no candied yams with marshmallows, no cranberry sauce from a can, and no lime jello salad.
This year I decided to reintroduce the Green Bean Casserole.
Or some fancy-schmancy version thereof. Naturally, I must make things as
difficult as possible.
For the mushroom soup I will substitute home-made crème
fraiche, cream, fresh thyme from the garden, and an assortment of foraged wild mushrooms.
For the green beans I will use fresh haricots vert—small,
thin green beans that have French pretentions, but in truth, at this time of
year, must be imported from Guatemala.
Instead of canned onions, I will fry some shallots, because shallots
make me feel special.
It is quite possible that my fancy-schmancy GBC will be no tastier than the traditional version, but it doesn’t matter. People
will scoop a small beany glob onto their plates between the mashed potatoes and
the some fancy-schmancy cranberry chutney. Gravy will slop over onto
everything, and we will all be talking with our mouths full, and no one will
notice that I used shallots instead of onions, or that the mushrooms are wild,
or that the Guatemalan beans have a French accent.
And that’s okay. Because we gather on this day to be together,
to remind ourselves that we are not alone, to feed each other, to feed that
which connects us. The whole point of making the food is to prove to ourselves
that we care. Cooking for others is its own reward. The more effort that goes
into it, the greater the love—even if the turkey is dry, even if the gravy is
too salty, even if the fancy-schmancy green bean casserole tastes of gravy and cranberries.
Photo of the finished dish tomorrow. Have a lovely holiday!
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