During a memorable family dinner, the pettiness level around the table was delicious
The holidays are a joyous time of love and goodwill, but they can really bring out the petty. Let’s be honest: Who among us hasn’t had a few less-than-noble moments during the festive season?
I’ve had many petty moments, and I’m OK with that. Being petty isn’t all bad: It has power and sometimes you just need to let your petty flag fly.
Over Thanksgiving I was discussing the pros and cons of being petty with my children and I was genuinely stunned when they started regaling me with a litany of my petty holiday moments.
Come to find out my pettiness forms the basis of some of their core holiday memories. They even had a top 10.
Surprisingly, their favorite act happened before they were even born. The story has become so ingrained in the family lore that it’s now a petty Christmas classic.
It all started at a holiday dinner years ago. I was a young bride enjoying my first holiday meal as the newest member of my husband’s family.
The food, honestly, was not great. There were hard-boiled eggs in the stuffing. I’m sorry but that’s just all kinds of wrong.
But there was one dish that was stellar. It was a corn pudding souffle. Light, fluffy and yet still very much embracing its pudding essence.
When I asked the family member who made the dish for the recipe, I got some major attitude. I was told I hadn’t been a part of the family long enough to merit any recipe sharing.
Talk about being taken aback. It was a recipe — not the nuclear launch code. So, thinking this family member must be joking I laughed, and then I was sternly and loudly rebuked.
That is what started a year-long petty journey. Because I decided right then and there that I would discover this recipe and serve up my revenge at the next holiday dinner.
For a solid year I attempted to recreate the corn pudding souffle. It was a challenge because with any recipe with a Southern origin story you need to be on alert for the holy trinity of ingredients, which could ruin a recipe. Watch out for lard, a can of cream of mushroom soup and saltine crackers.
This means you can’t just google “corn pudding souffle.” One must think like a great grandma and envision yourself in their kitchen. I did just that and by lots of trial and error, I not only recreated the recipe but made it better.
Fast forward to the next December holiday dinner where I show up with my corn pudding souffle. I made sure to put it in a look-alike Pyrex dish so everyone would believe it was created by Mrs. “I Don’t Share.”
I then slipped the dish on the table and pushed it far away from the other corn pudding souffle. When dinner began, people devoured my dish, making comments like, “It’s never been better” and, “This is even more amazing than last year.”
Meanwhile the original corn pudding souffle was being ignored. Right before the dinner was over, I announced that I had made the corn pudding souffle everyone loved.
This is when Mrs. “I Don’t Share” got a little heated. She dared to call me “confused” — which was my cue to turn over my now empty Pyrex dish where I had written my name on the bottom in Sharpie.
People gasped while I just smiled and cooed, “I guess I didn’t need your recipe after all. Do you want mine?”
Yes, pettiness sometimes is absolutely delicious.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.