No tomatoes, please

Well, I am finally home, and have a few hours to kill while I do my six loads of laundry. I’m so happy to be home, and it’s really really nice to see my brother (whom I have not seen since he went to VT in August — yeah, I just totally used whom. And correctly. Suck on that.), and, I have to say, even though we never really talked or got along too well as we were growing up, he’s turned into such a cool, art-doin cat, and I think I can safely say that I am super proud to call him my brother. He does so much cool stuff, and has turned into such an amazing, interesting person. And I’m not just saying that because I know my mom reads this.

Anywho, tomorrow! It begins! Usually Thanksgiving goes down something like this: I wake up at like, noon and then feel bad after I saunter downstairs to discover that my mom has already prepared 80% of the food AND done three loads of dishes (never forget the dishes!), just so she can make room in our tiny kitchen for more food that she has already made. Then I totally feel like crap when she’s all, “No, there’s not really anything for you to do.”

But alas! This year, it shan’t be like that. Aside from the fact that she bought actual pie dough that she’s gonna need me to roll out and mess with, I am ready to freakin do some dang cooking. I didn’t really miss the kitchen last year, mostly because I was too depressed to eat at all that semester, much less cook. Also, I kinda got a free pass on Thanksgiving because I was too busy being holed up in my room trying to recover from the nervous breakdown I had right before Thanksgiving break. Yaay

But this year, I am ready. I’m gonna be so obnoxious and trying to do everything, she’s gonna have to watch out. Also, if you’re reading this mom, we need to make cornbread tonight for the stuffing. I’m so excited about mashed potatoes, as smooth as my mom will let me mash them, chock full of sour cream and butter. I can’t wait for that delicious turkey gravy. There’s really no way to describe it effectively other than that it’s like no other gravy, and it has that amazing, magical holiday quality that makes me so happy(although, I could be one of the few that actually has other gravies throughout the year to be able to compare). Yeah, gravy is what puts me in the holiday season. And if you’re lucky, or amazing at it like my mom, it gets so wonderful and jellied when you put it in the fridge, and you can just scoop it out and put it on a sandwich, or throw it on some cold, overly starchy mashed potatoes and be amazed how everything is magically perfect again when you pull it out of the microwave.

I’m excited about the sweet potato souffle my mom makes. It’s not really souffle. It’s basically candied yams, except sweet potatoes instead of gross canned yams, and mashed up with a brown sugar butter and pecan topping instead of marshmallows. I find the perfectly cinnamon-y, buttered sweet potatoes so transcendent that I don’t even need the sweet candied topping. Or sweet potato pie, for that matter.

And pie!! I hate pie. The only pie I really like is key-lime pie, and that’s because it has graham cracker crust. Because the thing I hate most about pie is the overly flour-y crust, and there’s always too much of it. But I hate the fillings too. I hate pecan pie (sorry ma), and I don’t like sweet potato pie. I would say I hate pumpkin pie, but I’ve never even had it to know otherwise. And I’d kinda like to keep it that way. Don’t even get me started on pumpkin pie. That’s another entry.

But the coconut pie. I know it seems ridiculously inappropriate to have coconut pie on Thanksgiving, but my mom’s grandmother always made it, apparently, so that is what we do. Plus really, when the hell else does anyone ever eat pie, unless they live in a diner in Texas? The filling looks kinda like vomit before you bake it, I’m not even gonna lie. And you’re mixing it, and there’s chunks of butter and the coconut’s all gloppy, and you’re like, man, this is not going to turn out. But hey, you pull that sucker out of the oven, and it’s gorgeous, and you get this amazing sense of old-school Southern pride at having made a pie. The edges of the coconut shreds are all browned, so there are little toasty dots all over the surface, and there’s the slighest lemon scent wafting from it. It’s absolutely amazing, not to mention how awesome it tastes.

Well, that is all for now, I think my loads need to be switched out. And my brother fell asleep to “All My Children.” So even though it’s not even remotely cold enough to be the holidays, I might be in the holiday spirit, much to my chagrin, upon tasting my mom’s awesome gravy. Mmmmmm…