This article was originally published Nov. 21, 2018 in the Olean Times Herald.
The first time I realized I was a Southerner was the first Thanksgiving I lived in New York.
Before then, I hadn’t really considered myself tied to one region of the U.S., which in and of itself was odd. I grew up all through Mississippi and South Carolina, so basic geography should have been a clue to me.
However, we moved around a lot, so I spent so much time in Southern schools as the perpetual new girl that I didn’t realize how much of its boggy residue I had in my bones.
That is, until two years ago when I found myself at a table of people my age from around Olean for Friendsgiving — that modern tradition of young people gathering their “chosen family” of friends for a potluck days before Thursday with their family.
I was thankful for the invite, as it would be the first Thanksgiving away from my family and I was not looking forward to a holiday meal alone.
I’d only lived in the area for a few months, so I was a little nervous about picking a dish that would help me make the right first impression. But after some thinking, I knew — that bready side dish with sage, broth and egg. The king of turkey accoutrements.
I’m talking about dressing.
The problem is, apparently none of ya’ll know what dressing is.
For the perpetually snowbound Northerners, I’m referring to stuffing.
Except, no, I’m not. As I learned by the edge of my great-grandfather’s kitchen counter in Missouri, dressing is when dry bread is combined with cornbread, elevated to a sage-spiked souffle and served in a casserole pan. Stuffing is when someone takes bread cubes and shoves it in a raw turkey hole so it can be overbaked into mush.
Every good Southerner knows this difference. But the young people at Friendsgiving didn’t.
So when I signed up to bring a pan of dressing, I apparently created a tide of confusion.
Why, they asked amongst themselves, would she think salad dressing was a necessary holiday side? And instead of embarrassing me with this question, someone was assigned to bring a big enough salad to soak up the bowl of “dressing” I was going to foist on them.
The day of the meal, I dispelled the groups’ uncertainty by showing up with a non-insane side dish of what they recognized as stuffing.
When I was informed about the comedy of errors after dinner, I thought several things.
1) The disposable roasting pan filled with naked salad on the buffet line suddenly made sense. It was not, as I had thought, the last-minute results of a bad cook on a health kick.
2) I was annoyed that for several weeks, multiple people thought my favorite Thanksgiving side dish was a tub of ranch. What kind of life did they think I had led before I moved to New York?
3) What kind of life had these people led that it was perfectly logical someone would bring a side’s worth of salad toppings to a potluck with no salad to put it on? Were their family trees littered with crazy uncles who insisted on bringing croutons and bacon bits to Christmas brunch?
As much as I wanted to laugh at this odd mix up, I was more embarrassed than anything. And honestly, I felt more than a little lonely.
The recipe for cornbread and chicken dressing I had brought was the same one my grandmother and father had cooked for countless Novembers. The act of making it had given me a chance to recall my dad pouring warm chicken broth over stale bread with a bright red ladle until it looked the right kind of “soupy.” The dish so thoroughly reminded me of childhood that I swore I could make out the musk of my grandparents’ old cigarettes with the smell of hot butter, sage and celery.
So to me, the mix up felt like proclaiming your love for someone in your native language, only to realize they think you’re asking if you can sleep on their dinner table. It was the first time I really felt how far away from home I had gone.
THIS SIDE DISH farce was brought to my mind anew a few weeks ago, as I found myself once again explaining some crucial differences between Southern dressing and New York stuffing. This time, it was to my boyfriend’s family in Portville, as we sat down for a cozy chili dinner Halloween night. The stew smelled so good, one young trick-or-treater leaned his head in the house, took a deep sniff and then tried to invite himself in for supper.
The talk that night centered around upcoming plans for my first Thanksgiving dinner with their family. I was a little nervous about picking a dish to bring that would help me make the right impression. But after some thinking, I knew.
“Cornbread in stuffing?” said his mother, her eyebrows raising a little higher than I had anticipated.
But instead of feeling nerves at the question, I just laughed and explained my family recipe, painting the picture of my dad and I cutting celery as my mom drank coffee and my older sister slept. And after a few minutes of stories, my boyfriend’s parents assured me that whatever I decided to make would be wonderful to them.
I’m not sure exactly why I’m so much more relaxed about spending Thanksgiving above the Mason-Dixon line. Maybe it’s because Western New York isn’t so alien to me after a few years. Maybe it’s because even though my own parents are so far away this year, I’ll still be surrounded by people I love.
Regardless, I know one thing: No one better bring a salad to tonight’s dinner.
Danielle Gamble 