When I was a child, I loved Thanksgiving morning best: I’d awaken to the staccato banging of mom’s Chop-O-Matic — an avocado-green cylinder of plastic fitted with spring-loaded blade — and the toasty aroma of dad’s coffee. We’d flip back and forth between the various Thanksgiving Day parades on television, each one promising the arrival of Santa Claus. As the day wore on, the warm smell of turkey and dressing would overtake the house as my brother and I paged through thick Christmas catalogs and scribbled out lists.
End scene.
I would’ve been OK if the holiday had ended right there. But of course, it didn’t, and as a compulsively fussy eater, I had to contend with the grandest meal of the year — and so much food touching other food. My teachers told me I should be thankful — and I was! — but the push and pull of the day’s delight and revulsion was stomach-churning. In the delight column: Spearing pickles to set the snack tray, mashed potatoes, turkey. Revulsion: Eating aforementioned pickles (or worse, eating pickle-juice-tainted cheese), gravy, cauliflower casserole.
In our house, cauliflower casserole was as essential to Thanksgiving as the bird. My mom first remembers it appearing on the family table when she was a kid, in the early 1960s, after my grandmother’s close friend Florencie recommended it. The original recipe card is labeled “Company Casserole,” but we never called it that.
As I got older, I gave up picky eating, only to acquire a new, equally shameful food habit: snobbery. When it came time to host my first Thanksgiving, I ordered a shockingly expensive heirloom turkey and gently suggested to my mom that maybe we should reimagine the cauliflower casserole. Perhaps we could substitute a different cheese for the Kraft Old English slices? Cook down fresh mushrooms, instead of using canned? Wisely, my mother stood firm, and together we cooked it as my grandmother had written it. The cauliflower casserole was as rich and dreamy as ever; the heirloom turkey was dry and weirdly fishy.