That Thanksgiving thing

[oyceter]

After living in Taiwan for so long and spending quite a few USian holidays in Taiwan, I am always shocked to discover that the vast majority of the US does indeed do things like celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other such holidays.

For example, I was going to go to SF for writing group today, but after being stuck on the freeway for twenty minutes and going approximately three miles, I gave up and turned back around, only to brave the untamed hordes of Safeway.

There are a lot of people on the highway the day before Thanksgiving! Also in the supermarket! I mean, I technically knew about the crowds at the supermarket, since I cook for Thanksgiving, but since my sister and I usually go either 10pm the day before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving morning itself, it astonishes me that there are people who are organized enough to go more than 10 hours before the cooking starts. (I was only there for pumpkin, since I randomly decided to try pumpkin pie from scratch this year, and I should probably roast the things today instead of tomorrow.)

When I asked an employee there if they had pumpkins, they said they had run out. Unless I was okay with pie pumpkins? Which was the only kind I was looking for. I am confused! People buy pumpkins for decorative and not food-related purposes for Thanksgiving and not just Halloween? Or... you use non-pie pumpkins for non-pumpkin-pie pumpkin dishes?

Also, while talking to school friends and other acquaintances, people have things like family traditions for Thanksgiving! I realize I should be used to this by now, but I am not, as almost everyone I've ever spent Thanksgiving with does not have Thanksgiving family traditions. Mine consist mostly of seizing whatever tasty-looking thing Alton Brown just made on Good Eats and attempting to cook it for the first time and feed it to a group of people.

Thanksgiving! It is my chance to make food for more people than just me, so I generally use it for food experimentation. Except turkey. I have never roasted a turkey in my life, and I am content to continue on with that tradition.

(My sister's boyfriend, who is ABC and much more Americanized than us, was a bit baffled by the lack of turkey, but he will have to deal unless he wants to do it himself. Instead, we will have dumplings and meatloaf (My friend said she puts bacon on top to keep it from drying out. I said, "BACON! On MEATLOAF! MUST TRY!").)

I was going to say I may eventually get used to Thanksgiving, but I suspect I will forever be in a state of mild shock this time of year no matter how long I am in the US. Spending traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas with my old ex's family way back when constituted some of the most foreign experiences of my life. I have spent too many holidays important to me away from home, celebrating with other uprooted friends and family, ceremony cobbled together from books and commercials and memory and whim, to ever feel like I fit into anything resembling tradition, save New Year, and even that is more often spent in exile than not.

Comments

[mme_hardy]

People have *big fights* over family traditions at Thanksgiving. It is not unusual to make two different batches of stuffing because one side of the family believes in cornbread and the other not. My in-laws make two different sweet potato dishes because two out of the four sisters like different recipes. My husband's family think pimento cheese is a salad; my family think it is a sandwich spread. And so on. (My contribution to the arguments: if it isn't pie, it isn't Thanksgiving. Pumpkin cheesecake is just WRONG.)

Merged families == competing recipes, and not necessarily in the good way. My family of chronic sickoes is staying home and eating precisely what we like: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing (for husband), brussels sprouts, fresh rolls both clover and butterflake, weirdo cranberry jelly that you slice out of the can (husband and me), salad, cranberry compote, maple-pecan pie (this is a radical change; usually it's just pecan), apple pie.

Christmas is a blessed relief for many families, because for some reason it's less usual to have prescribed Christmas menus that you have to follow or it isn't Christmas.

[mme_hardy]

P.S. Bacon on meatloaf is FANTASTIC, especially with good bacon. It's especially important nowadays, because modern ground beef is so very lean.

[delux_vivens]

People have *big fights* over family traditions at Thanksgiving.

farreal. it can get seriously ugly!

[torachan]

I love the canned cranberry jelly. My grandma always makes homemade cranberry sauce, too, but I prefer the canned stuff. Just slice a bit off and put it on your turkey and you're good to go!

[oyceter]

*dons anthropological hat* You people and your foreign and exotic customs! ;)

But yeah, I suspect that competing traditions thing is always going to be something strange for me, or if I somehow do end up in a family that has those, I will be the weird person making chickpea pancakes or samgyetang no one else eats.

[phi]

People do use pumpkins for decorative purposes at thanksgiving! Because it looks all harvest-y and Thanksgiving is a harvest festival (although God knows why we celebrate the harvest in late November. Unless you live in the deep south or California, harvest season is over).

Pretty much any recipe with pumpkin you want pie pumpkins. Non-pie pumpkins are bred for looks, and are tasteless and gross.

[delux_vivens]

at this point? i firmly believe in the power of libby's canned.

[oyceter]

Haha, decorations, WHUT?!

I am currently at the state that if I have no dirty dishes in the sink and everything is mostly vacuumed, we are set for visitors!

[meara]

You can also put bacon on top of a turkey to cut down on basting. IJS.

[oyceter]

That is what some of my friends did this year! I didn't notice much difference in the turkey, but then, I don't eat much turkey anyway.

Also, it created a funny dichotomy with vegan dishes vs. dishes with BACON!

[yeloson]

I have a weird space because while I lived my entire life in the US (well, 2 years in Canada as well), my family stopped celebrating holidays in any functional way a long time ago, so the holidays are never a big thing for me and I, too, find myself going, "Geez, why are all these people in the supermarket? What? Oh, Christmas? Oh, that makes sense" etc.

[oyceter]

Yeah... even when my family is together, we do holidays pretty haphazardly, and most of the time my relatives are in different countries, so there's not much of that either.

This afternoon: "Hrm. I guess it is the day before Thanksgiving. Does this mean more traffic?"

Later this afternoon: "YES."

[rosefox]

American born and raised and I still do this. In my case it's a combination of being Jewish ("Wait, why don't I have to go to work on December 24th?") and a New Yorker ("What do you mean the stores are not all open all the time?").

[thistleingrey]

Mine consist mostly of seizing whatever tasty-looking thing Alton Brown just made on Good Eats and attempting to cook it for the first time and feed it to a group of people

This does not seem to me like a bad thing.

I've done Cornish game hen as tiny-gathering alternative to turkey, and between that and going elsewhere have still not roasted a turkey myself.

[oyceter]

I was going to do turkey samgyetang until I realized a turkey would be too big to fit in my stock pot (people will laugh, but since I have never roasted a turkey, I have no idea what range of sizes turkeys come in!), and then I was just going to do plain samgyetang, but my sister said her bf wanted something more meat-y. Ergo... meatloaf!

I think my life Thanksgiving goals are to a) never make a turkey and b) to someday try turducken. (eating it. not making it!)

[troisroyaumes]

My family always skipped over Thanksgiving to celebrate my father's birthday (which usually falls in the same week) instead, so I share your bafflement over people's Thanksgiving traditions.

Dumplings and meatloaf sound delicious! And much better than roast turkey. ^^;

[oyceter]

Yeah... in Taiwan people in my school would try to organize Thanksgiving potlucks for lunch, but there's really only so much you can do with an hour lunch period and people who kind of know there should be mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey and... stuff.

(Haha, I rarely like roast turkey, so I am totally with you!)

[yhlee]

I've told you about my first year of college looking plaintively for a restaurant that was open on Thanksgiving, right? Because I was stuck at college and couldn't reasonably go home in the time allotted and had no idea what to expect? I mean, in Korea our Christmas treat was to go out for dinner and I had supposed that restaurants would be more likely to be open on a harvest festival than on Christmas. Whoops. :-D

Now I miss Chusok food...

[oyceter]

Yes! And your Thanksgiving quail! I was tempted to try that this year.

[torachan]

We went shopping on Monday and stores were already horribly crowded. D:

[oyceter]

D:

Thankfully Ranch 99 was okay, although parking gave me a headache.

[yasaman]

Hahaha, my family doesn't have any real Thanksgiving traditions either, other than generally trying to eat the meal together. And I'm one of the plan the meal days in advance types, so I always get my shopping done a few days before. Except for how I inevitably forget something and have to send someone to brave the hordes.

Anyway, this year, I just did a ton of baking since my cousins are handling the meal itself. My pumpkin pies are in the oven, and I have some loaves of challah and pans of cinnamon rolls waiting for their turns.

[oyceter]

Cinnamon rolls yum!! This is the first year we are trying homemade pumpkin pie, so... we'll see how it goes!

[lovepeaceohana]

If you're up for it, this is the recipe I use for meatloaf - it comes out perfectly every time, and is DELICIOUS.

Otherwise - I dunno. I'm with you on the "ooh, an opportunity to test a new recipe!" thing, but otherwise I don't really see it as a big deal. I save all my holiday cheer for the, er, holidays in December (hard to specify, since said cheer begins the day after Thanksgiving and lasts through mid-January).

[oyceter]

Ooo that looks good. And, haha, if we use that, we will technically have turkey on the menu!

[veejane]

I learned to stock up early after the time I went out for butter at 5:45 PM on the day before Thanksgiving, and was sternly followed around the store to make sure I left before closing, at 6. And by early, I mean a week or two in advance.

(I've been agitating for something other than turkey for years. Turkey is SO BORING. Also about 15 portions too big for what we need nowadays. Seriously, personal quails, one per plate, how is that not awesome? But the idea is having trouble getting off the ground.)

[oyceter]

I am so not a turkey fan! I love quail though! Maybe I will try that next year...

[rushthatspeaks]

In my family, and the families of the rest of my household, everything goes very well on Thanksgiving except for the green bean casserole nobody likes, which is an affliction in every single one of our extended families. It's the one with condensed cream-of-mushroom soup and crispy onion straws on top of it, and when I say nobody likes it, I mean nobody, but everyone has to have it because they've always had it. Apparently it would not be Thanksgiving otherwise. Or something.

My household started having an entire separate earlier household Thanksgiving a week before dispersing to our various extendeds just so we could have a nice Thanksgiving dinner without the fricking green bean casserole.

[oyceter]

Ahaha, I actually am kind of fond of casseroles with Campbell soup! My mom used to make one with the mushroom soup and napa cabbage with parm on top. That said, I don't actually like green bean casserole that much because I feel beans should be somewhat crunchy!

[wcynic]

I, too, am completely baffled by the concept of Thanksgiving. I grew up in Canada where Thanksgiving is in October and is a very low-key affair compared to the US, and I lived in the most Asian of suburbs in Vancouver so my family either never did Thanksgiving, or, when we did, we just went to a Chinese restaurant.

Ironically, now that I'm in Hong Kong, my extended relatives now order a turkey at Christmas. We draw the line at pumpkin pie though. We prefer pumpkin 糖水 instead :)

On an unrelated matter, I'm not sure if you've come across this article written in a Canadian magazine about how Canadian universities are being ruined by too many Asians. In case you're interested, here's a pretty good summing up:

http://www.racialicious.com/2010/11/12/macleans-magazine-revisits-old-fears-with-too-asian-article/

I would recommend you read the offending article AFTER you've enjoyed your Thanksgiving, because it does anger up the blood a little. D:<

[glass_icarus]

Haha, my family does the turkey thing because we figure it's the one time of year that we'll actually be bothered to cook it! I'm not counting my mom's cranberry sauce, because we like it enough to make it all year round. The rest of our "traditions" are mango salsa and shrimp with cocktail sauce (EASY), and usually my mom's you fan (except not this year because we don't have enough guests); everything else is pretty much up in the air depending on what we feel like and who's coming. :P

The nice thing about being the only "full" household unit this side of the world is that we're the ones who call the shots for holiday gatherings, and my parents are so relaxed about the whole tradition thing that it'd probably be more stressful for us back in Taiwan! Sometimes the flip side of "exile" is the freedom to choose, I guess.

[daedala]

Thanksgiving is J and me and the cats, but we are making a turkey. And cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole (the kind maligned above; J insists), and pecan pie. We haven't actually started yet, though, and maybe we should!