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Thanksgiving in SoCal: What are your Thanksgiving food traditions?
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This table has a mix of "traditional" American Thanksgiving foods and some Arabic additions.
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Courtesy of Rana Redfield
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Thanksgiving week means recipes and last-minute cooking tips for a traditional Turkey Day meal are in abundant supply: How to roast a turkey without burning your house down. How to make the creamiest mashed potatoes, the most savory stuffing, the most mouth-watering pumpkin pie.
But lest we forget: We’re in Southern California, land of mashed-up cultures! And that means mashing those cultures into our Thanksgiving dinner recipes, too.
Why opt for gravy when you can drizzle on some mole? Why have cornbread stuffing when you can have sticky rice? In fact, do we even need a turkey at all? (One KPCC staffer's Chinese-American household’s annual meal: takeout Peking duck, complete with a hot pot smorgasbord. No turkeys to be found here.)
In that spirit, here are few food traditions some listeners have shared with us:
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Melissa Alvarenga, who describes her family as “large, loud and loving,” tells Take Two:
“For Thanksgiving, we usually have an offering of Central American tamales from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and even Mexican (my favorite are the Salvadoran variety). We also have Honduran stuffing, which is sweeter than traditional savory stuffing. It is also a lot more meaty and includes olives, chickpeas, and raisins — although it is not for everyone, I love it!”
“I grew up with a strong sense of my Polish heritage attached to the holidays, watching my grandmothers and my mom make my favorites like golumpkis and pierogis, and I like to keep this tradition going. In addition to the Thanksgiving standards like turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, we will also include kielbasa, sauerkraut and fresh horseradish.”
Thanksgiving morning in White's household entails codfish, hot chocolate and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. After that, the household descends into chaos.
"Since my family's from the Caribbean islands, my mom prepares traditional Caribbean meals such as...rice and peas, chicken, fish, callaloo, peanut punch, mauby, ginger beer and macaroni pie."
"What really makes my family's traditions important and unique is we are really just celebrating American holidays as well as the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays because it brings us together as a family."
Confusion over what stuffing is led to the creation of a sticky rice dish.
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"It's this yummy mix of shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, soy sauce and deep fried red onions. And it's so fragrant and yummy and umami."
“We experiment most years, some dishes are mainstays. One long-time favorite: My wife makes an awesome soyrizo dressing/stuffing.”
"We use bell pepper, celery, rosemary and jalapeño chile and some walnuts and apples. We put it with bread, Mexicans we use bolillo, like a french roll, and we want to put some chorizo.”
To hear SoCal residents share their Thanksgiving traditions, click the blue play button above.
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