In 1621, Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast. Fast forward almost 400 years, and Thanksgiving still is a feast, but we’ve added football, euchre, and drinking wine in the afternoon. At least those have become the traditions for my husband’s family in Ohio, where we celebrate Thanksgiving. If, like me, you also travel to gather with your spouse’s extended family, it can be hard to know what to contribute to the potluck meal. Obviously, the host has the turkey, and veteran family members have their traditional dishes. My husband’s widowed Aunt Joyce always does the green bean casserole. My mother-in-law strong-arms the “healthy” option with her fruit compote salad. And 30-something still single cousin Chuck has dibs on rolls and soda. So, what is a girl from Pennsylvania to do?

Welcome to the vegetable side dish. I personally love vegetables and cook with them quite often. But stir-frying and roasting veggies like I do at home isn’t really an option when road-tripping for Thanksgiving. Over the past few years, I’ve experimented with varying degrees of success with vegetable casseroles. Full disclosure: I’m not a great cook. I can make a straight-forward dinner for my family, but I’m a bit lazy. I know fresh garlic is better, but I still buy the minced garlic in a jar. So, if you, like me, are the daughter/niece-in-law from out of state, who is an OK cook, I’ve got the perfect vegetable side dish for you!

Direct from a Campbell’s soup label: The “Crowd-Pleasing Vegetable Casserole.” It calls for one can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, 1 ½ cups of shredded swiss cheese, 2/3 cups of sour cream, ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper, two packages of a frozen vegetable mix (cooked and drained), and two cans of French fried onions. You mix all but one can of onions and ½ cup of cheese together, bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees, then sprinkle the remaining cheese and onions over before serving. Viola! There’s cheese, there are veggies, and there’s crunch—crowd-pleasing indeed. Sometimes I use cream of broccoli instead of mushroom. Sometimes I’ll skip the sour cream, sometimes I’ll add in paprika along with the pepper, sometimes I’ll have every intention of making something different but end up defaulting to this super-simple dish.

Now, is this the most sophisticated side dish? No. Would I make this if I were in my own kitchen and just going across town for Thanksgiving? Maybe, but probably not. Would it just not feel like Thanksgiving if I didn’t make this? Of course not. But this dish does the work. I can make it ahead of time, like the day before, it travels well, and quickly reheats, taking up limited space in the oven. In a pinch, you could reheat in the microwave. It adds to the meal, without causing anyone any grief or inconvenience, unlike my brother-in-law who one year got fancy with brussels sprouts in a rosemary balsamic glaze.

In an odd way, this vegetable side dish represents my role in my husband’s family: An inoffensive, getting the job done, supporting player. I have this theory that the dish you make for Thanksgiving is a metaphor for your position in the family unit. The host, usually the matriarch or a direct descendant of the matriarch, makes the turkey. The patriarch tackles the mashed potatoes. Hippie aunts do the fruit salad. The young newlywed cousins make something complicated from a food and wine magazine. The twenty-something singles bring beer. Great-aunts do homemade pies. Have a look at your family feast this year and see if my theory holds true. So, what are you making this Thanksgiving? Are you a vegetable side dish, or are you bringing on the turducken?