After Halloween, everyone starts decorating for Christmas and getting their tree up, but we can’t forget about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday where everyone’s love of food comes true, and they say how grateful they are for what they have. But arguably, this holiday is mostly favored because of the food.
The usual traditional Thanksgiving dinner would look like a glazed ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked carrots and green beans, cornbread, sweet-buttery rolls, and Thanksgiving isn’t the same without turkey.
When you’re done inhaling all that delicious food, you need a dessert like pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie, chocolate chip cookies, and lemon crisp cookies.
Many people don’t eat the traditional menu for Thanksgiving dinner, however. Different cultures and races could have their own traditional way of having a Thanksgiving dinner in America.
Every ethnicity has something different to eat at Thanksgiving dinner.
As a Filipino, my family switches off if we want the traditional American menu for dinner or to have Filipino dishes which are roasted veggies, pancit (Filipino stir-fried noodles), chicken adobo (type of stew), lumpia (Filipino eggrolls), steamed rice, lechon (pork belly slabs deep-fried), sinigang na baboy (a stew with sour and savory vegetables), and instead of turkey, we have a whole roasted pig.
For many Filipinos, such as my family, we have a Kamayan, which is a traditional Filipino feast without any utensils. Kamayan in Taglong means “by hand” and it can be also called a banana leaf dinner because the whole table is covered in banana leaves for the food to place onto it.
Sweet and salty desserts like turon (a sweet pastry that’s deep-fried), cornbread, flan (custard dessert), ube pie, steamed rice cakes, and bibingka (baked coconut rice cakes) are also had on Thanksgiving.
But at the end of the day, everyone around the world, whatever they eat for Thanksgiving dinner, have something in common, and we’re all grateful for what we have. And Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the same without the people around you that you love.
