"I've prepared and handled raw food?"

. . . as Goldie Hawn says in bewildered tones, in Overboard, that towering piece of cinematic majesty.

Dandy Gilver would be much the same.   Cook, to Dandy is a noun.  Cook, is Mrs Tilling, and you can find some of her recipes below stairs on the Dandy Gilver website.

As for giving thanks?  “My dear, I don’t think so, do you?  One shouldn’t gush with emotion in public.”

Not me.  I love Thanksgiving.  I don’t really get it, but I love it.  It’s a four-day weekend and there’s lots of food.  (For a hilarious take on this holiday from a UK point of view, see Simon Wood, who blogged about it yesterday.)

This is my third since moving here.  First time out I was on Martinelli’s duty.  Impossible to get wrong.  Last year I served my apprenticeship on appetisers.  Possible to get wrong, but no one cares because Thanksgiving dinner is all about the main course and the truckload of sweet things to follow.

But this year?  Oh-ho, this year I have been promoted to – drum roll – green bean casserole.

I’m making two.

 

One with fresh beans, crimini mushrooms, sour cream, onions that I’ll caramelise in my cast-iron frying pan for two hours with nutmeg and garlic, and chicken stock that I made with three chicken carcasses and handfuls of herbs and which is in my freezer in small batches against just this eventuality.

And the other one.  You know the one I mean.

Now, I feel very affectionate towards the idea of mixing together products and calling it cooking – what a friend on Facebook this week called “the Midwestern Lutheran church-basement pot-luck tradition”.  Some of my happiest evenings in Scotland ended with an after-dinner game using the Amish Barn Cookbook I brought home from a winter in Ohio.

No one ever guessed the seven ingredients in Amish waldorf salad.  Foodie friends would say – very airily – “Well, celery, apples and walnuts.  Let’s get them out of the way.”  And I’d say, “Nope.”  Endless fun.

That Thanksgiving in Ohio was also the time Neil and I wondered if the stores were open the day after the holiday and drove out to a mall to see.  It seemed quite busy.  We laugh about it now.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.