Swiss Green Bean Casserole

When discussing my blog posting strategy for November, my husband suggested that I incorporate things for which I am thankful along with recipes for your Thanksgiving feast.  This past year has been one of the most challenging of my life and it’s easy to lose sight of how lucky I am.  I decided to take his suggestion to heart.  For the next two weeks I will be dedicating each post to one thing that I am truly thankful for.  This week, I present you with:

New Experiences and Old Classics

Years ago I heard that the song that was #1 on the Billboard Charts the day you were born defines your life.  The day I was born, the Eagles were singing about the “New Kid In Town.”  This could define most people’s lives, of course.  I don’t feel like I’ve moved more than the average person, but I keep finding myself in places where I feel like the quintessential new kid.  I’ve learned to enjoy new experiences and a lot of the people that go along with them.

However, when I most need comfort, I turn to old classics.  Favorite jeans, quilts made by my mom, and movies I’ve seen a thousand times.  When I was struggling with the new normal during my divorce, I reached out to my old friends to remind me of who I used to be when I was younger with fewer responsibilities and less weight on my shoulders.  My house is filled with memories of the people and things that I have loved for a long time.

Friendships are like that. You know that old Girl Scout song, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, but the other’s gold.”  That song has been going through my head these past few weeks as I’ve been struggling with this post.

I fail when I try to do justice to describing the friendships in my life and what they mean to me. Each friendship is a carefully curated mixture of personalities and experiences.  Some friendships serve a purpose and die out fast, others are there for the long run.

When I was a lot younger, I didn’t allow myself many friendships.  I was friendly with people and people probably considered me their friend, but it was extremely difficult for me to let people into my life.  I wasn’t ready to allow myself to be seen.

In recent years, I’ve come to realize the best friendships are the ones where we can let ourselves be open and vulnerable.  When we surround ourselves with people who not only know the worst moments of our lives, but support us through them, we experience true friendship.   It allows us to combine our old classics with our new experiences for a richer, more fulfilling life.  Even people that were put on the back burner have new light when seen through different perspectives.

An example of this is my daughter’s godfather.  When we were young, I was probably a bit cruel to him as kids can sometimes be.  I don’t remember anything specific I did to him, but I know I mostly dismissed him as a weird kid.  It probably had a lot to do with me feeling sort of jealous that he could allow himself to just be weird and not care.  I was tighter wound than that.

As we got older, I came to see him as more of a real person, but not enough of one that I was going to go out of my way to stay in touch with him in the days before Facebook and email and Words with Friends.  People grow apart, right?  Fast forward about 20 years.  He’s standing across from me as I am marrying his best friend.  A year later, he’s in the same church standing across from me as we baptize my daughter and he’s making all these promises.  He likes to tease me about the horrible child I was.  I tell him he’s not funny.  We try to out-clever each other and he adds so much laughter to my life.  I just spent years looking at him all wrong.

It would be silly to pretend that there aren’t other amazing people in my life.  I’ve recently reconnected with a woman with whom I traveled to China.  She was one of those people I immediately knew was going to be my friend.

I could tell you about my best friend in the whole wide world that I haven’t seen since my sister’s wedding because she lives in Finland.  It would be easy to tell you about the friend that held my hand and saw my butt when I was afraid I was losing my rainbow baby.  But it would be so hurtful to leave out my dear friend and her husband who is like another brother.  Equally, I’d have to mention all of my awesome supportive trivia friends, my work friends, and all of the great neighbors I’ve had over the years. 

The thing is, the more you let people in, the more new experiences you have, the richer your life becomes.

Great, so now we’re at the point where I have to stop being all serious and philosophical and start talking about the recipe.  That’s the thing that originally got people to read, right? 

So let’s pretend that I told you about our Swiss exchange student. Now, let’s pretend that I’m really clever and have somehow managed to create a brilliant metaphor comparing my friendships with Swiss Green Bean Casserole.

And now that we’ve so cleverly accomplished that, it’s only natural to explain this Thanksgiving worthy side dish.

Swiss Green Bean Casserole is a different sort of twist on a classic dish we all love.  New experience meet old classic.

Like any other green bean casserole, Swiss Green Bean Casserole is green beans tossed in a creamy sauce with a crunchy topping.  The big difference between this one and any other green bean casserole is the layer of melted Swiss cheese between the beans and the crunchy topping.  I know…right?

My middle child and I debated the merits of different types of Swiss cheese before deciding on a nice, basic Swiss cheese.  I reluctantly put back the block of baby Swiss and stared longingly at the more exotic cheese straight from Switzerland. I knew in my deepest parts that Great-Grandma would not have had the selection I did.  It wasn’t fair for me to turn her dish from basic into gourmet just because I had better cheese.

You will note that the recipe calls for oatmeal in the topping.  If you’ve read other blog posts, you know that I have a horrendous allergy to oats.  I substituted crispy rice cereal for the oats in this recipe. 

This dish wasn’t actually too bad.  I would’ve preferred the cheese be mixed into the sauce instead of layered on top.  Next time, I’d use yogurt instead of sour cream.  I think it needs that tang.  I’m sure this dish was supposed to be seen as “healthy” with the addition of yogurt, whole wheat flour, and oatmeal.  And it tastes sort of healthy, but it kind of begs to be corrupted,.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

The Recipe:

If you liked this post and want to see what I made last Thanksgiving, check out:  Whiskey Slush, Champion Apple Pie, Cherry Meringue Pie, Pumpkin Pie, and Food Roadtrip: Honey and Cinnamon Candied Yams.