Love is the Best Spice

I remember being four years old and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner at my great grandmother’s house. I called her Mowie. No one was ever able to tell me why I settled on that to call her, but that’s a different story altogether. My job was helping Mowie prepare the green bean casserole. I took great pride in helping with that dish because my role in it had begun long before that Wednesday, November 23, 1988. Several months earlier, Mowie and I planted the green beans in her garden. Every weekend when I came to her house, I watched the seedlings grow. Sometimes, I would take the little tendrils and wind them around the strings of the lattice because Mowie told me the plants would need the support. Eventually, I helped Mowie harvest those green beans...and I confess that I ate as many straight off the vine as I put into the harvesting basket.

The day before Thanksgiving though, Mowie took bags of green beans out of the freezer and put them in the sink to thaw. She opened cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and containers of French’s crispy fried onions. My job was to stir everything together and spread the fried onions on top – I ate a bunch of those too. Mowie must have known I would because she bought an extra container just so I would be able to snack, and there was enough for the casserole.

Every year after that, my job for Thanksgiving dinner was the green bean casserole. For many years, I only helped. I think I was thirteen the first year I did everything myself. By then though, Mowie was no longer in my life and I no longer had homegrown green beans to use. Like many people, I was using canned green beans by then; I didn’t care. It was still important to me that the green bean casserole be part of Thanksgiving dinner.

The year I turned eighteen, my mother decided we were going to have all fresh ingredients on our Thanksgiving table, so if I wanted green bean casserole, I was going to have to make some changes. We had company that year, lots of company, so Mom decreed I was going to have to make three casseroles – one for each table. So I went to the store and I purchased five pounds of fresh green beans, three containers of white button mushrooms, and a pound of onions. Thankfully my two best friends were among the guests that year and were willing to help me. We sliced the onions with many tears between us, chopped the mushrooms very fine, and then we had to prep the green beans. We broke off the ends and pulled the strings off, and then french filleted them. Do you have any idea how long it takes to do that to five pounds of green beans? Even with the three of us...it took hours. I made homemade cream of mushroom soup and fried the onions; neither of those tasks were quick either.

You’re probably wondering if we served green bean casserole that year.

I’m happy to tell you that we did.

I’m embarrassed to admit that year was the last year I made green bean casserole for many years, because I could not stand the thought of having to go through that again. I didn’t think about doing it in stages and freezing the green beans ahead of time, or making the cream of mushroom soup ahead of time. What can I say? I was young and foolish and didn’t think things through.

Years passed. I can’t say that I never made a green bean casserole at all. There were potlucks and times when I just wanted to eat it. It was good, but it didn’t have the same emotional comfort as having a green bean casserole for Thanksgiving dinner. I got married and started having Thanksgiving dinner with my husband’s family. They weren’t interested in having green bean casserole because it wasn’t part of their traditions, so I didn’t press it.

Last year, though, I was searching for new recipes for my instant pot. I wasn't looking specifically for Thanksgiving dishes, but I came across this one from FoodFanatic: https://www.foodfanatic.com/recipes/instant-pot-green-bean-casserole-recipe/.

It looked so good and so simple that I decided to add it to our Thanksgiving dinner even though we didn’t really need any more dishes to the table. I made it quickly and easily and when we got to my mother-in-law’s house, we stuck it in her oven, which was already turned on to cook the fried onions. Just like that, it was done!

The best part – everyone, including all four of my kids, loved it so much they asked for it for Christmas dinner too! I’ve reclaimed a part of my childhood I’ve been missing for years and Mowie’s memory is alive again.