Hannah Jones/Winonan

Everyone remembers the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom From Want.” The piece depicts an ideal Thanksgiving dinner scene, with a rosy-cheeked old woman in an apron lowering a colossal roast turkey onto a table. The said table is already packed with various covered dishes, piles of fruit, and abounding family members young and old, smiling cherubically at one another. This is the epitome of America’s favorite food holiday, a time of close family, a tasty bounty, and usually a pristine white tablecloth dragged out from its tomb in the linen closet.

I can guarantee you that that painting pretty much sums up what every American college student is thinking about when November comes around.

I believe, on some level, we all miss the comforts of our roots. We miss our kitchens, cupboards, refrigerators, favorite snacks, beds, sofas, and televisions.

We long for those dearest to us, whether that’s family, friends, or significant others back in our hometowns. In fact, I’ve had a few friends look sadly out the window, sigh, and confess, “It’s just… I really wish I could see my cat again.”

However the desire manifests itself, in most of us, a longing for home constantly gnaws at us every day we spend living in this second residence, our school.

Some of us satisfy this domestic itch by hightailing it out of town whenever to get our fill of homemade cookies and high school friends. Those of us unwilling or unable to pack up and escape for the weekend must get our fill of home life in other ways.

For my part, I get closer to home through food. This year, I received the gift of a crockpot, which excited me nearly as much as receiving my first university laptop. I resolved to make one dinner every week a home-cooked meal and share it with friends.

Like the Plymouth pilgrims, I would bring piece of home to this new world, sharing a bounty with the people who live, work, and play with me in our little Winona colony.

With my slow cooker and pocket book of recipes, maybe I could create a domestic scene that Rockwell himself could have painted.

Sadly, my efforts better resemble that scene from the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special when Snoopy serves a questionable paper plate of toast, jelly beans, pretzels, and popcorn, and poor Franklin gets the crappy broken lawn chair.

My homemade dinners, because of my limited budgets for groceries and time as well as a limited number of options for slow cooking, involve a lot of pre-processed ingredients and Great Value brand canned vegetables.

In place of a vast, white tablecloth, we have a card table with four folding chairs and an old floral cloth designed to fit a completely different table shape provided by one of my roommates. Instead of a cheery-looking woman with a gigantic platter of turkey serving up the entree, we have a simple lineup in front of the crockpot, ladling up simple stews, lasagna made from cottage cheese and Prego, and stir fry that is neither stirred nor fried, but rather stewed for six hours.

Sadly, I don’t know of a way to roast a turkey in a crockpot, and  if I did, the poor little appliance would not be big enough to hold that colossal bird.

However, as we all sit down at the table, each of us with a full plate or bowl, and a weird or exciting story to tell about class that day, I feel a glimmer of what those angelic painted faces seem to portray: that warm, belonging feeling that comes with hot food and company.

After all, when the pilgrims couldn’t make their bangers and mash or their steak and kidney pie, they didn’t despair.

Instead, they brought corn and eel, foods they once didn’t know how to catch, grow, or cook to the table, and sat down with their neighbors and benefactors, the Wampanoag, in joy and gratitude.

Thanksgiving isn’t just about freedom from want; it’s about thriving out of your element, beating the odds, and creating a home and a family out of what was one a strange land and a strange people.

To be fair, the first Thanksgiving didn’t include turkey, either. Probably not enough room in the budget.

Contact Hannah Jones at [email protected]