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

[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!

[mme_hardy]

I am highly amused that the local organic/upscale stores (inc. Trader Joes) now have supposedly good mushroom soup in cans for making a version of that casserole that actually tastes good.

Me, I stick to fresh veg, having mercifully escaped The Dreaded Casserole as a family tradition.

I wonder who buys those packaged fried onions the rest of the year?