Comfort Food

Comfort Food

I don’t recall seeing my mother use very many recipes. Most of the foods she cooked (read: fried) were those she had learned to cook in her mother’s kitchen. She cooked to please my dad and, since both of them had been raised on Missouri farms, food was simple and hearty. When I became a wife and mistress of my own kitchen, I began to experiment and collect recipes. My Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, a wedding present from co-workers, was my go-to for everyday things, and as I used it, I learned how to time meat cooking and vegetable cooking so that one thing wasn’t sitting and getting cold while others were still tough or raw.

Over the years I gleaned recipes from magazines, newspapers, and, most of all, from friends. A holiday staple in the family I formed was my friend Pettey’s Green Bean Casserole. Casseroles made with green beans and mushroom soup and canned fried onion rings are ubiquitous, but I happened to get mine from Pettey and it became our classic holiday dish. Here is the recipe:

· 2-3 cans French cut green beans, drained

· ½ stick butter or margarine

· ¼ cup finely chopped onion

· 1 can mushroom soup

· 1/2 roll Kraft garlic cheese

· 1 can Durkees French Fried Onion Rings

Melt butter and sauté onion until translucent; add soup and cheese and stir until cheese is melted and blended. Pour soup mixture over green beans and sprinkle liberally with onion rings. Bake in 350 oven for about 25 minutes or until mixture is bubbly.

When my daughter moved to Alaska in 1994, she and a group of friends started having Thanksgiving together. Her contribution was Green Bean Casserole. For several years I could expect a call on Wednesday before turkey day with a request for the recipe. I suggested that she might try writing it down and saving it, but secretly I enjoyed sharing that time with her and was glad that she had that memory of holidays at home and wanted to keep the tradition. She couldn’t find Kraft Garlic Cheese Roll in Alaska, so she learned to substitute Cheez Whiz with a dash of garlic powder and achieved the same result. After she met and married, and her other friends were married and all of them were having children, she was still counted on for the Green Bean Casserole. She rarely ever had any to take home, so she would make a second casserole for them to enjoy over the days following Thanksgiving.

When granddaughter #2 was born a week before Thanksgiving in 2004, I was there and was drafted to make the casserole for the neighborhood potluck. It had been several years since I had made it, so she had to remind ME how to do it. And it was just as good as I remembered.

I wonder what recipe her daughters will be calling her to get in years to come.