In anticipation of the third annual Arkansas Cornbread Festival, Tales from the South recorded a special episode in early October featuring cornbread stories, and I was reminded of my own first experience cooking cornbread. It might seem too early for a Thanksgiving anecdote, but just consider this in keeping with the American spirit of celebrating holidays well in advance.
It wasn’t my first Thanksgiving away from home that I decided to try my hand at holiday dinner. That first year, into only my first month living in London, my fellow expatriates and a few enthusiastic flatmates gave thanks over several large pizzas. One was even topped in turkey and cranberry. It was no turkey-and-stuffing spread, but it was shared with love.
But by the time my second Thanksgiving in London rolled around, I was craving a traditional, American-style Thanksgiving dinner. So were a group of newly made English friends who promised to provide the turkey if the Americans would bring our favorite dishes for their very first Thanksgiving.
My Californian flatmate Jessica and I split the menu: she’d provide the sweet potatoes, and I’d take care of the green bean casserole, cranberry sauce and stuffing. Not quite fair, but fine. I was worried about where I’d find some of the necessities on my grocery list until I was directed to Whole Foods, known for its wide selection of American commodities.
I headed there the night before Thanksgiving and was touched to see so many symbols of home. Pumpkin pie! Marshmallows! Boxed macaroni and cheese! They even had the french-fried onions I needed for my casserole. I wheeled through the aisles grabbing items not on my list, but that I figured were American enough to be included in the meal. Yes, like cheese dip. I saw a box of cornbread mix and threw that in the cart as well.
The next morning at our friends’ flat, Jessica got to work on the sweet potatoes and I started putting together the stuffing, which I began to realize I hadn’t actually ever seen made. Who brings this stuff to our family Thanksgivings, I have no idea — it just shows up, like that person you’re glad to see around the table once a year but you’re not really sure how they’re related to you.
Around the same time, the guys who had offered to “take care of the turkey” discovered that they had not taken care of thawing the turkey. We were doubtful we’d find a thawed one nearby; to most of the country, this was just another Thursday.
I got to work on the green bean casserole, combining cream of mushroom soup with green beans into one mushy, sloppy brown mess. When the Brits asked about my “green bean soup,” I couldn’t muster much confidence in answering that it would, potentially, in the near future, turn out to be a casserole.
We were behind on our timeline, so I delegated more of the cooking. After seeing that the cornbread batter was mixed, I instructed idle hands to get a dish — “What kind? Whatever you can find.” — and set the timer. I pulled out the stuffing, which had doubled in size in the oven, and was now very excessive for our group of 10 or so.
At this point,Jessica was sprinkling brown sugar, pecans and marshmallows — a compromise we’d struck because of our different family traditions — on the mashed sweet potatoes. The Brits looked on, filling up on cheese dip as they grew more suspicious of our dinner. “Is this dessert?” they asked. Nope, in America, we call this a vegetable.
The whole thing was just on the verge of stressful. I was finally about to lose it when a timer went off and someone pulled a cookie sheet out of the oven. It was the cornbread. When I said “whatever you can find” to whoever was helping me, apparently a cookie sheet was all that he could find.
The cornbread was a sad, flat, yellow thing, brown around the edges, like a giant sugar cookie. Except it wasn’t even circular. It was a cornbread blob. The very center was kind of fluffy though, and it gave people an idea of what could be.
As we gathered around the table to eat, we had a pretty impressive, albeit alternative, spread. A turkey had been procured; the casserole turned out yummier than it looked, as usual; the potatoes were as sweet as dessert, as usual; and everyone was happy. We broke the cornbread blob and cheers-ed with Budweiser (you know, for America) and dug in.