I Had Created a Bowl of Mush.
This year, for Thanksgiving, we had a couple of people over – all family – and Bill did most of the cooking. Bill usually does most of the cooking, because I struggle in that area. I will not dwell on my history of historically bad cooking experiences.
But this year, in order to save my own life, I have given up a few things that are huge on the traditional Thanksgiving menu. Stuffing, for example, is my favorite food. But it contains gluten and dairy. I can’t eat gluten or dairy. Or soy, potatoes, corn or sugar.
Sugar, of course, is huge. And no one said I could eat coconut sugar, but for Thanksgiving, I did. In fact, I also ate potatoes.
But I also made a gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, potato-free, sugar-free green bean casserole.
You know that delicious green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup throughout and fried onions on top? The one that melts in your mouth and after it’s gone, you dream about it for weeks? And you can hardly believe your good fortune that it’s GREEN BEANS, so you know it’s healthy?
That’s the one I was trying to mimic.
I had green beans and onions, so I bought the remaining ingredients and got right to work on Thanksgiving morning. I sliced onions. I sautéed mushrooms and garlic. I sort-of diced onions – meaning I put them into the blender on “food chop” which, it turns out, doesn’t really chop food at all. It just liquifies food. Still, I had onion flavor.
I realized 3/4 of the way through the recipe that I had only printed out the first steps. Having not printed out the last few steps meant that I had no idea what to do with the coconut milk and bone broth, and no idea how long to cook the beans or on what temperature.
And when I looked up the recipe online – the one I had printed only the day before – the server was down and I was stuck. I had no finale for my superstar recipe. In fact, I had no clue what to do.
Bill tried to help while I was freaking out, as did my mother (who was letting me use her oven to bake the beans). And they did help – but mostly I just ran around, befuddled, wishing I hadn’t bothered to even try.
Then, only two hours later, I had created a bowl of mush that resembled porridge with shrubbery growing from it.
I threw some supposedly fried onions on top (which were actually sautéed) and called it “done.” While my mentally challenged sister-in-law thought it was delightful, and my husband admitted that he actually loved those beans, I was not a fan. All I could see were my mistakes.
And I realize, looking back (one day later), that this is the way I treat myself constantly. All I see are my mistakes.
So why does it come as a surprise when I point out all of the kids’ mistakes and don’t remember to compliment them on their successes? If they’d made a green bean casserole, and worked as hard as I did to do it, I would have eaten that thing with vim and vigor.
Which, now that I think about it, is just what my mom did.