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Thanksgiving in Chinatown
By adamg on Wed, 11/23/2016 - 9:13pm
Adam Cheung recalls growing up in Chinatown, where Thanksgiving was celebrated in part because it was the one day of the year restaurant workers tended to have off.
I think one time at Kwong Kow we had a potluck before Thanksgiving and my mother made Mash Potatoes. The Chinese kids devoured it so fast and all the leftovers were these intricate Chinese dishes. My mother thought that was kind of strange. But the thing is, When you eat home cooked Chinese food everyday and you grow up in America you start to crave the mainstream American food.
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Comments
My grandmother used say that same thing
Coming from an immigrant Italian family they regularly had home cooked Italian food, homemade Italian scali bread, etc, but her and her siblings desired the Wonder Bread they saw their classmates have. The grass is always greener.
When I was a kid I did not
When I was a kid I did not appreciate my father's his roast chicken breast or homemade soup for lunch. I just wanted to fit in and have tuna or pb&j or boloney&cheese and a Twinkie or devildog as desert
Well now I am grown and have much respect and appreciation for his cooking and homemade food in general.
Novelty
Sometimes it is just the novelty that is appealing.
My son was remembering a family gathering where his cousins sucked down most of a case of Mexican sodas before their mother stopped them.
He thought that maybe his aunt had simply kept them from drinking/eating any sugar things (like some of his friends were like this), but I explained that that wasn't the case. There was plenty of other sugar crap available, but they went for the Jarritos because it was novel. They lived in a small town in rural Canada and had never seen/tasted such things before! Who needs a can of pepsi when there is guava and tutti fruitti and ...
The sad turkey
My boss is Chinese-American, from a restaurant-owning family. He talked about their huge Thanksgiving dinners, with an amazing spread of special-occasion Chinese food, and over in one corner a token turkey that barely got touched. Because you have to have a turkey for Thanksgiving, right?
Chinatown Thanksgiving
This is a truly great story: warm, funny, truly American.
Matt Damon needs to option this. It could do for Thanksgiving what Ralphie and Red Ryder did for Christmas.
I can see all the little kids drooling in anticipation over the mashed potatoes, and Uncle Chen arriving from Stockbridge, full of pride as he brings in the traditional Thanksgiving beaver.
It's a winner all the way!
And thanks for pointing me to a blog I never would have found, one that has a lot of promise!
I can see the closing scene
After efforts to create the perfect homemade Thanksgiving dinner have failed, the family ends up going out to the local McDonalds for cheeseburgers and fries.