I've been invited to spend Thanksgiving with a friend in the physics department and the friend's family. Which is a wonderful, amazing, very kind thing to offer. The thing is, the rule is, you can't just show up at someone's house for Thanksgiving with nothing. The other thing is, I basically know how to cook three things: (1) Hamburger Helper, (2) scrambled eggs, and (3) sweet potato casserole. Because the Pilgrims were primitive and didn't have supermarkets or chickens, apparently Hamburger Helper and scrambled eggs aren't considered proper Thanksgiving food. I could make a sweet potato casserole to bring to the dinner. But I've found out the hard way that there are always about 15307513074 sweet potato dishes brought to any given Thanksgiving dinner. So I want to bring something a little different. To that end, I googled "simple Thanksgiving recipes"... What I've found is, if you google any random recipes, they always involve stuff like "mincing" and "broiling" and "sauteeing". I'm sorry, but I need a recipe that says "cut this stuff up into little pieces" and "put this stuff in a pan and put the pan on a burner" or "turn your oven onto 400 and turn that dial to bake, then put your stuff in the oven". As soon as you tell me to "cube" or "tenderize" or "poach" or "reduce" something, I'm lost. Fortunately, I found a recipe for
Honey Roasted Squash Rings that I think I can handle. Hopefully it'll turn out well. I'm going to buy all the ingredients and get it started tomorrow night. Squash is something like a pumpkin right? Or a zucchini? Or a cucumber? Do they label that stuff in grocery stores?
I'm already regretting saying yes to going to Thanksgiving dinner. I've mentioned before how I'm a loner. What that means is that the prospect of spending a full day meeting with and socializing with people whom I don't know and whom I've never met before is dreadful. I hate small talk. I hate talking about work or sports or where I'm from. I know, right now as I'm writing this, the rational part of my brain is telling me that it won't be terrible, and, in fact, it will almost definitely be a fun and entertaining and generally pleasant experience. But I'm dreading it. I honestly want nothing more than to stay home all day on Thanksgiving and watch House reruns and read and surf the Internet. But I live in a society, and part of living in a society is being social. So I'll be cooking my squash or cucumber or zucchini or whatever rings tomorrow night, and I'll meet new people on Thursday and that will be that, and probably when it's all said and done I'll have a good time. And then if I'm lucky, maybe I'll get home in time to watch some House reruns.
