For the first time, I spent my first Thanksgiving away from my immediate family. I watched from the sidelines, the twinges of homesickness amplified. I buried myself hundreds of recipe browser tabs and the challenge of crafting a Chilean version.
The Challenges
It was my first time cooking on my own and I was preparing for a group of potentially 20 people. It would be a difficult undertaking in the US, let alone in Chile. Carlos and I spent the entire week gathering ingredients in a city-wide scavenger hunt. We could only buy what we could carry, which is a lot, but limited. We probably made at least 8 trips, asking store employees for things they had never heard of, like cranberries and sweet potatoes. We never found pumpkin, buttermilk, or french onions, but most of it we eventually located (some only after an hour of traveling to the grocery stores in the center of Santiago). Heroically, Carlos bought the turkey and rode home with it on his bike, making it home despite 17 pounds of frozen turkey swinging against his front wheel.
I lamented not having our car for the grocery shopping. I longed for my food processor. But most of all, I missed owning an automatic dishwasher. They’re not common here. Normally, I don’t mind because it doesn’t take long to hand wash. But when faced with all the dishes from cooking and the meal, I realized how much dishwashers help the whole process. Luckily I had a dedicated support team (Carlos’ mom) who bore the brunt of the dishes as Carlos and I cooked for 2 days straight.
Cooking a turkey for the first time was very intimidating. Some choice words were said about thawing, something like, “who the f*ck does the USDA think they are, telling us we can’t thaw at room temperature, they have no authority here”. I had to call my parents when I couldn’t find the bird’s neck after searching for an hour. Googling and youtube videos are not as helpful as you might think, since every other top hit for “turkey neck” is about plastic surgery for women. Whenever things start going wrong these days, I start to wonder if it’s a Chilean thing. Maybe Chilean turkeys don’t come with necks? But the turkey was actually from a North Carolina farm. Eventually, after more thawing, Carlos found it. He insisted on referring to the turkey as “Miley” after Miley Cyrus and he made me laugh by making “Miley” twerk and dance for me. It was so raw!
Timing everything together was simply out of the question. Our oven is bigger than an easy-bake, but not by much, so we had to spread it out. There were more miscommunications than I expected, none of which came from a language barrier but rather a decentralized planning process involving 6 different people. I thought I would be cooking at the place where I would be serving and using two ovens in neighboring houses. I prepared all my ingredients to travel only to learn that morning that the plan was for me to bring all the food over in a car, already cooked. I nearly had a melt-down, something which spending a lot of time in front of an oven in 80 degree weather didn’t help.
We learned we would be picked up at 7pm, the time that I thought that I was going to put the dinner on the table. And, as I should know by now, 7 means 7:45. We actually started eating around 9. “Chilean time” is one of the hardest things for me to adjust to, and I suspect that the miscommunications exacerbated by no one understood the scale of meal until it was on the table. And how could they? It’s so foreign.
The Happiness
I’m happy to report that despite the challenges, the food and the meal was a resounding success. The turkey was succulent; the green bean casserole was simultaneously crunchy, cheesy, and creamy; and the Chilean gourd zapallo made a fantastic “pumpkin” pie. Making the meal was one way that I could give back to Carlos’ family for the kindness they have showed me.
This year, I introduced a group of adults to foods and flavors that they had never, ever tasted. Imagine reaching 70 years old and having green bean casserole for the first time! Watching everyone giddily discovering new tastes was remarkable and worth all of the work. It was like I had flown the whole family to a foreign country, if only briefly. The first few minutes the food was on the table was complete chaos. Everyone was running around out of their seats to get different dishes, exclaiming and asking for explanations about ingredients. Turkey was being piled on plates without anyone knowing whose plate was whose, and some people were standing and eating because their places were occupied by other dishes.
Cynicism* about US holidays comes easily to me, but this year it vanished. This year, the meaning of Thanksgiving was incredibly salient. I realized how important it is to be gracious and to open our hearts and homes to those who are different and foreign. In new situations, we often have no choice but to rely on those around us. My new family has taken me in with loving, open arms, for which I’m grateful.
I realized, quite acutely, that the things my parents said and did through years of Thanksgivings made an impression. They taught me how to openly welcome and feed everyone and anyone who might not have a home or a family nearby. It’s part of how my family solidified my (our) new relationship with Carlos; I invited him very early on to come to my family’s home, even though we didn’t know him very well. One year my sister brought home at least 4 people for a few days, all of whom stayed in our house, sleeping on air mattresses and couches. There is always space, there is always enough food, and always enough love to go around. “The more, the merrier” always held true. I was glad that I have the chance to convey this to my new family, and to give them a chance to feel its glow. It’s more than the food, it’s about the sharing of abundance and pooling resources for survival. It’s about putting aside selfish patterns and purposefully acknowledging, I am fortunate, I am grateful, and I want to share what I have because we are in this world together.
Once everything was on the table and hunger abated, the happiness of the meal enveloped me. I felt a fullness of success that was more than just the food in my stomach. I hope that I will remember to pause and be thankful the next 364 days, especially among the ex-pat challenges, and make sure my heart is still pumping love outward.
The Menu
Garlic mashed potatoes
Oven roasted turkey, with a salt, rosemary, and thyme rub
Gravy, made with gibblets but without a single lump or piece floating
Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce, no frozen berries, but I found cans of it, still can’t believe we found it
Stuffing, with Chilean marraqueta bread, spices, apples, dried cranberries, and Chilean longaniza (a type of sausage)
Sweet Potato Casserole, made from Peruvian camotes and the semi-rare mini-marshmallows
Corn Bread, did not work well with polenta
Creamed Corn Pudding, had to make my own creamed corn; it was a huge hit
Green Bean Casserole, with cheddar cheese (very rare and expensive here) topped with ham-flavored cracker crumbs
“Apple Pie” (Really kuchen borracho, a rum apple cake)
And the crown jewel of the meal: Pumpkin pie with an oreo crust, made with zapallo, a Chilean squash
There was also an asado with other meats and several vegetable salads that Carlos’ family brought.
*A note on cynicism: It’s hard to explain the native and pilgrim origins of the meal, of the cooperation and the help of one group of people given to another for survival, without thinking of the genocide that came in return. The excess of food is almost embarrassing and is facilitated by things that come from wealth, like big refrigerators and big ovens. My family has always used to the day to pause and to purposefully acknowledge the good things in our life, but it’s still easy to characterize blithely characterize Thanksgiving in terms of U.S. football and food.
Pelo de choclo 