Your great aunt thinks it’s fucking bullshit she has to turnaround and make another green bean casserole in less than a month. What was Thanksgiving? Last week? Jesus, the weeks fly by. Fucking Christmas. And don’t think all your great aunt has to do is buy a few cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup and dump them into a decorative dish with some canned green beans from the supermarket and a tin of French’s Fried Onions and voila, foil wrap the top.

That’s bullshit.

She cans her own beans you little shit and she is running low. Real fucking low. How many square feet do you think her root cellar is anyway? It’s not a McRootcellar. The year has gotten long in the tooth, son, and she is Depression Era as shit and isn’t about to give up the rest of her beans, not with winter coming. She’ll be rationing until the spring, when she revs up the ‘ole victory garden. But if she were gonna make another green bean casserole, she could rinse, trim, and halve a pound of green beans ready to go in like two seconds. Then she’d blanch ‘em for five minutes, drain in a colander and immediately plunge the bunch into a giant bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Her beans are perfect.

And don’t think the topping is a walk in the park. Your great aunt would never say it, but French’s Fried Onions can suck a dick, too. She tsk-tsks the ingredients label.

Shit, your great aunt makes her own topping. Takes two medium onions, thinly slices them as if the ancient paring knife with the freckled blade she uses is actually a laser beam. Brings out a cup of all-purpose flour, eyeballs two hearty tablespoons of panko bread crumbs and pinches the shit out of some salt. And don’t think she can’t double or triple the recipe without so much as thinking about fractions. She grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance before school and cooked with a wood oven and has never needed an egg timer. She just knows when shit is done. Basically anything that takes kitchen skills she has on lock down.

But your great aunt is tired. The Reader’s Digest copies are stacking up on her bedside table. You’ll get a green bean casserole next Thanksgiving. But she is sweet as anything and can’t show up empty handed. So how about this, you wanna beet casserole, because she has tons of beets, shelves of ‘em she canned herself that are cobwebbing the corner of her root cellar. You know what, fuck it: she’s making a beet casserole for Christmas and you’re gonna like it.