Thursday, November 27, 2008

American Indian Thanksgiving

My family accidentally happened upon a Thanksgiving concept that I believe is absolutely brilliant. The day before Thanksgiving we had a Thanksgiving dinner for all of our family and friends who are going to be out of town on Thursday. My dad is famous, apparently, for soft, deconstructed tacos that I had never been able to partake in - being in China and all. My sister was excited to try out one of our grandmother's famous traditional Jewish-Hungarian desserts. As of about two years ago my parents are now vegetarian and slow-food, organics-inspired.

The concept: Organic Vegetarian Jewish American Indian Thanksgiving

A buffet of fresh tomato salsa, homemade guacamole, corn-on-the-cob, soft corn-based tacos, white rice, black beans, cabbage salad, and meatless ground beef. Drinks were a selection of Navarro wines ... yuuum. And dessert was that cheese danish mentioned above.

I am awestruck by how truly appropriate this concept is given the ridiculousness with which "traditional" thanksgiving meals have hit the mainstream. I was reminded of this particular ridiculousness as we were standing in line at Whole Foods buying my favorite coffee (Mexican Zaragoza Select) yesterday when a 14 year-old, jolly, slightly-overfed girl in line behind us lamented the mass killing of turkeys on Thanksgiving every year. Her father was buying an enormous turkey and boxed stuffing. His turkey was a whopping $42.00!! He grunted in melancholy response, probably more upset about having spent the fortune on the bird.

So, please don't take me seriously about the fact that my family has chosen the politically correct track for Thanksgiving because anything related to PC and my family is strictly coincidental. Over our tofurkey soft tacos and corn-on-the-cob, we giggled about topics ranging from the sublime to the extraordinarily un-PC all shrouded and hidden in yiddish terms that seem to soften the impact.

Anyway, aside over, I am still proud to say that we avoided the mass marketing efforts of Hallmark and the poultry industry. I mean, who really believes the pilgrims ate like that? And, who decided on that meal? I'm mostly glad we avoided the mad crowds in the supermarkets and apparently quite a bit of moollah. We're in a recession, right? Kidding. We're still having our regular Thanksgiving meal today too. But at least we celebrated it appropriate-style the day before. Time to hit the gym.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My family eats roast duck (Cantonese-style) in Mexican tortillas! And nuomifan instead of stuffing... and pretty much whatever else we want instead of turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!