"POC Thanksgiving is lit ... mashed potatoes but also lumpia and sisig"

November 21, 2018 9:51 AM

If you want a break from turkey (or the store ran out), you can check out 15 alternative Thanksgiving meat recipes from Babble, or 33 vegetarian main dishes for Thanksgiving. For a broader view, look beyond the more traditional "western" cuisines, and consider multi-cultural meals -- Turkey And Tamales: People Of Color Share Their Multicultural Thanksgivings (NPR), in which Malaka Gharib notes that For many immigrant families, Thanksgiving is a time to take part in an American tradition, but it's also a great excuse to gather and eat the foods of their culture with friends and family. For some POCs, that's the best part of the holiday — a time when you can literally mash the cultures together on your plate....
posted by filthy light thief (15 comments total)

literally every holiday needs to involve lumpia and/or tamales
(preferably 'and')
posted by halation at 10:00 AM on November 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

You know my day didn't have to involve thoughts of lumpia that I can't eat. I thank you from the bottom of the empty feeling in my stomach.
posted by humboldt32 at 10:03 AM on November 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is delightful and takes me back to learning about my high school classmates immigrant parent traditions - and them being shocked that white people didnt eat shrimp along with their turkey.

also:

One of my aunts married a white guy, and now we have cranberry sauce.

had me rolling.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 10:07 AM on November 21, 2018 [5 favorites]

Oprah Magazine had a fun article along these lines.

My childhood Thanksgivings were strictly traditional (thanks Mom), but when my mom was growing up apparently Chinese noodles were a required part of Thanksgiving, and these days we go to my boyfriend's family's Thanksgiving, at which the sticky rice and the spam musubi are the dishes that go the fastest. Mmmm.
posted by sunset in snow country at 10:45 AM on November 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

My kingdom for duck on Thanksgiving.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:12 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Timely, I was already planning on subbing out the turkey for carnitas this year. Just haven't been feeling into doing turkey this year.
posted by Aleyn at 11:23 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

We had an office Thanksgiving potluck on Monday, and we're still enjoying left-overs. We didn't have turkey, but there was a ham, but also three kinds of tamales, spanakopita, and tabouli (tabbouleh).
posted by filthy light thief at 12:05 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Cranberry sauce is absolute crap compared to cranberry chutney. Just sayin'.
posted by sotonohito at 1:08 PM on November 21, 2018

My kingdom for duck on Thanksgiving.

Asian markets. Find a good asian market. It will have duck anytime you want to find it. If it doesn't, it can order it for you easily if you aren't shopping last minute for your holiday meal.

We're having duck confit tomorrow because we have a good asian market we can visit. Yum!
posted by hippybear at 1:30 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, there was a short period of time when duck was widely available in the US at, of all places, Walmart. Because they were doing this insane Duck Dynasty cross promotion thing where you could barely walk through the store without running into those beards on nearly everything somehow. During this time, they were carrying duck in the meat department right next to the chicken.

But then that one guy said those things which weren't good and Walmart cut ties. And let me tell you, that was DRAMATIC. Within 36 hours, basically every trace of that marketing campaign was erased nationwide. Most of the products weren't Duck Dynasty products, they were just being promoted by those guys in the store. I don't remember if the duck disappeared, but I do know you don't find it at Walmart much, if at all, since then.
posted by hippybear at 1:33 PM on November 21, 2018

Doing Thanksgiving right: our menu this year includes Japanese beef curry and mi goreng. 😍
posted by Snacks at 2:33 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have been tasked to bring the salad.

I'm also bringing the radish kimchi, and the soy braised, hard boiled eggs. I love HMart!
posted by spinifex23 at 3:42 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Tasty Thanksgiving recipe compilation from the Mash-up Americans blog.
posted by terooot at 7:22 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh man, sisig. Eat it twice a week so good
posted by Ironmouth at 8:02 PM on November 21, 2018

The first time my wife came to my Italian-American family’s Thanksgiving, she was delighted to find it included a pasta course. For a while this was lasagna; at some point we switched to ravioli when we realized that oven space was in short supply.
posted by madcaptenor at 4:07 AM on November 22, 2018 [1 favorite]