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

[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!

[mme_hardy]

It's one of those processed foods that if you didn't grow up with, it's crazy, if you did, it's home. See also: pimento cheese.

I keep threatening my family with proper Midwestern Jell-=O salads.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN SLICE

SCOOPING WITH A SPOON IS THE ONE TRUE WAY TO SERVE CANNED CRANBERRY JELLY

(Observe my family's [somewhat deliberately created] Thanksgiving schism!)

[torachan]

LOL!

[mme_hardy]

YOU SPOONIANS ARE OUTCASTS FROM SOCIETY. OUTCASTS I SAY.

[trinker]

My family doesn't bother having competing recipes, somehow, the place settings are becoming fewer, but the required dishes are increasing. Now we have two or THREE different kinds of cranberry stuff (gotta have the sliced rings, with the can marks; gotta have this wild raw cranberry/raspberry relish thing, which is always popular at potlucks; and maybe the chunky canned cranberries with mustard powder mixed in).

Stuff never seems to be demoted, just new dishes added in.

[lady_ganesh]

I like all of it. JUST GIVE ME CRANBERRY.

[daedala]

Slicing is wrong.

For one thing, a young child may sometime later confused sliced pickled beets for sliced cranberry jelly and be traumatized for LIFE. :)