Cooking Up a Fire Storm

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all my food/American history lovers out there! This year I set out to cook my own Thanksgiving feast with my roommate and brother. I was excited, I was motivated, I was… not at all prepared for the stress that comes with cooking a large meal. Not just a large meal, but a large meal with such high standards attached. I mean for god’s sake this is the meal when the Indians totally forgave the white man for being real jerks and broke bread with them. Peace was accomplished, bygones became bygones, I’m pretty sure this is where the high-five originated. That is A LOT to live up to.

The struggles started in the grocery store. As someone whose grocery shopping is limited to spaghetti, vegetables and almond butter, I was flustered. I felt like I had never been in a grocery store before. When did those things get so confusing? I had so many questions. Many of which I was too embarrassed to ask of a real person. What if my questions were common sense? What if anyone who spent more than 12 dollars at the grocery store at one time could answer them? Does everyone know if active yeast is the same as nutritional yeast? If Lilly’s pure pumpkin is the same as pumpkin puree? The difference between kosher salt and regular salt or where the piecrusts are?

After we left the grocery store my nerves settled and the ease of Thanksgivings past crept into my mind, surely this year would be the same! I envisioned us laughing casually, nibbling on the cheese and crackers we set out and gently waving an oven mitt over a steaming dish to cool it down. Of course all of these visions were in slow motion because isn’t that how we all make memories? These images clouded the reality that would soon hit me.

The afternoon started out so peaceful and smooth, but it was not long before the fast-paced, high-risk activity of making sure every dish received the proper cook time and attention began. I cannot even accurately put into words the transition that occurred in the kitchen. And probably more likely than not, I was the one who instigated this transition from calm and collected to THERE’S NO TIME!!!!!! Gravy was flying, measuring cups went missing, people were crying! (a lot of the recipes called for onions.) My brother and I had a quick, pointless snap at each other over why we didn’t buy a potato masher. Honestly, I was treating each situation/minor hiccup as if a bomb were going to go off if we did not have each dish piping hot and on the table at 6:30.

But… SPOILER ALERT! I panicked for no reason. Dinner was delicious. We laughed, we drank, we cheers-ed to multiple things for which to be thankful, my favorite being that the house didn’t catch on fire when we burned through a pot while boiling potatoes. Oh, did I not mention that? It’s okay it wasn’t a disaster. Unless you call mashed potatoes that smell like burned steel a disaster, then, yes it was a disaster. But it didn’t matter; we had successfully cooked Thanksgiving dinner on our own! Maybe next year we’ll try to cook a turkey. Or maybe we’ll just buy a rotisserie chicken. Because I KNOW where that is in the grocery store.

Here is our wonderful dinner:



Here is the pot we burned through to make that beautiful dinner: