Preserving traditions through marshmallows
I’m thinking of bringing back a dish that was a constant on our Thanksgiving table, and is the antithesis of how I believe we should eat — the sweet potato marshmallow casserole. It was without a doubt my favorite dish on the menu at Thanksgiving when I was a kid. Its extra-special status bolstered by its scarcity, as it was only offered once a year compared to the rest of the holiday menu. It was an orangey-golden mash, topped with toasted gooey sugary marshmallows, and it perfumed the front of the house as it neared done. It was the last thing we’d put in the oven before we sat down, since a warm marshmallow is a fleeting thing. My Grandmother’s version was essentially a dish of canned sweet potatoes and canned fruit, which I believe was most probably canned pineapple, (Grandma’s secret ingredient), mixed with brown sugar, and topped with “Jet-Puffed” marshmallows. It sat right next to the turkey and the green beans, and it was all I saw when I sat down to eat. That is, until I started to care about what I ate, and where it came from. All our culinary progress on how to eat well has improved most holiday staples, but I’ve noticed that when we kicked the marshmallows out, we lost a bit of joy and innocence along with them.
The smell of this dish is such a strong trigger for me, that all I have to do is think about its warm toasty aroma, spiked with cinnamon, and it brings me right back to the crowded kitchen in Queens where I grew up. The whole frenetic scene unfolds in in my memory, and I can see myself sitting on the floor in the corner of our tiny kitchen, trying to stay out of the way, and getting yelled at for sitting on the floor. We’re all shouting over the din of the perpetually running exhaust fan on top of the brown stove. There are at least three to four people busying about in a space with a maximum capacity of two. One room away in the “picture room” are a few men tasked with staying out of the kitchen and trying to keep conversation going. Somewhere in that room is whichever guest my Grandpa is holding hostage as he tells yet another story in excruciating detail that appears to have no end. When I revisit this scene, triggered by the smell of toasted marshmallows, I can also see the turkey just out of the oven, and the shockingly red cranberry-jello mold (also with pineapple). I can feel the warmth, and the whole scene is painted brown, tan and mustard, the colors of the kitchen of my youth. This olfactory trigger is so strong that the entire holiday scene comes back, along with all of its tastes — overcooked turkey, under seasoned and limp green beans, lumpy mashed potatoes, and the box of stuffing — that it feels almost claustrophobic, like the evening itself. Cozy, familiar, cloying — the essence of the holiday.
When I think about the Thanksgivings since the disappearance of the sweet potato casserole (sometime post-college I insisted we replace them with Balsamic flavored mashed sweet potatoes), and the dishes that we can consider new traditions, I know they are vast improvements, both from a taste and a nutrition perspective. There are many that I have grown to love, and I now look forward to every year (roasted brussels sprouts, homemade stuffing, or my version of pumpkin pie), yet none of them even come close to the magical hold this dish has on my memory. This year, I can’t shake the feeling that the one day we take a moment to be grateful, we should consider whether the menu feeds our psyche, as well as our bodies. Just because we may know how to serve a healthier sweet potato, does that mean we should? Maybe, this is the one day a year we are grateful for what we have at present, and of the traditions we chose to preserve. And maybe, while we’re honoring those memories of a simpler more innocent time, we can all feel a little less serious if the sweet potato casserole is once again invited to the party — even if only for dessert.
