You Got Some ‘Splaining To Do: About The Turkey Baster Penetration Index, Or, Does Your Latino Family Celebrate Turkey Day?
19 November 2007, 12:15 PM. By Carlos Posas
One of us asked a random Puerto Rican whether she grew up celebrating Thanksgiving on the island. Random Puerto Rican said: “Hell no!” Dismissing it as purely Anglo shit. Baffled, we asked another native Puerto Rican who said:
We had Butterball turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pies, and copious amounts of booze. This year I’m making Pavochón with mofongo stuffing. Thanksgiving is as Puerto Rican as Jorge Posada. Both yummy!
Random! Apparently one man’s turkey baster is another man’s junk. This is all very confusing to us, which is why we wanna ask our Latino readers: Did you grow up celebrating Thanksgiving, either in the States or abroad? Or does Thanksgiving bring up images of Pilgrim/Pocahontas torture porn action? More to the point, can you substitute escamoles for arándanos as a nice side dish? Do Peruvians stuff their Turducken with a nice helping of cuy? Break it down, peeps!
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As a chicana from El Paso, I grew up in San Elizario where the first Thanksgiving in the US occured. There is no mention of that in the history books. It was between hispanics and native americans.
Plenty of Orlando-Ricans celebrate “San-GEE-veeng,” including my family, who’s been roasting the bird and eating rubbery canned cranberry sauce since relocating from PR to Florida in the late 70s. Also on the menu: pan sobao, green-bean casserole, pumpkin pie from Publix, Mom’s coquito.
My abuela and mom traded holiday hosting for years (Mom would do Xmas, Abuelita Turkey Day, or vice versa), until my granny got old and her knees crappy, so Mom handles holiday dinner duty for both. I think family in PR celebrates Thanksgiving, too, probably with lechon and pasteles and arroz con gandules instead of turkey.
I grew up in Puerto Rico.
LOOOOOTs of people in Puerto Rico celebrate San Gui Ving, or at least most people I grew up with do. There is most definitely no school on that day or the Friday after. When I grew up, we’d eat rice and black beans, ripe plantains, and a whole Butterball stuffed with mofongo and served with mojito (not to be confused with the drink, and not to be confused with the Cuban interpretation of mojo).
The only way someone could grow up in PR without celebrating Thanksgiving is if their parents are hardcore independentistas (which would be less than 10% of the population if you go by votes during the last elections). But it would still be really hard to avoid the turkey sales at every friggin supermarket.
when my parents imigrated here from Colombia, they celebrated their first thanksgiving with a store bought rottisserie chicken which then evolved into the full fledge feast we enjoy today with of course, Colombian twists. Papa chorriada right next to the mashed potatos, natilla right next to the pumpkin pie etc.
we’re mexican and we celebrate it just to eat, even though we allpretty much agree it’s a bullshit holiday…none of that pilgrim/native american celebration stuff…it’s just a nice day for the family to get together and eat and be thankful for that…and we have turkey w/white castle stuffing and things like mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie but we also add mexican dishes like mole, tamales, chocolate, arroz etc
My family typically prepares carne asada, codornices, pozole or mole rojo for el Dia del Pavo. We don’t celebrate it much.
We’ve always celebrated Thanksgiving but it always seems like any other day in our parents’ house. Our family needs no special reason to cook a ton of food, bust out the booze and call the family over.
The only difference between Thanksgiving and any other family weekend is the giant turkey and the real plates.
My Miami Cuban family has always done “Sansgivi”. The turkey is prepared with naranja agria and has mojo instead of gravy but all the usual stuff accompanies- stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread, sweet potato. And a flan de coco alongside the pumpkin pie, of course.
It’s all about tamales.
Had a traditional thanksgiving dinner laster year with some friends (the one who prepared the feast is mexican) and it ended up with people getting high and paranoid and a small fire. This year, I’m sticking to tamales.
In our house Thanksgiving was done Panamanian style with the obligatory turkey, various forms of rice and beans; and my stepfather’s jehri curl juice staining the furniture.
My family is from El Salvador and we have tans-guivin with turkey made salvadoran style…as in pan con pavo (hot turkey sandwiches on french bread with sauce). We have macaroni and cheese, estuffing con chicarron, arroz con frijoles, un pie, sangria; its kind of amazing.
my family does have a dinner on thanksgiving day, and we love to eat so we embrace all eating holidays, but we don’t make the turkey. my mom doesn’t know how to make turkey anyway. we feast on red meat like the good argentines we are… jeje :)
This is bizarre. I totally grew up celebrating with the all the regular stuff. Turkey, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy (thanks, mom!) and various other Native American sides like corn and sweet potato. Then topped it all off with various pies. Tamales are reserved for Xmas eve. Oh and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Horns Vs. Aggies on the tele, of course. Hook ‘Em!
I was born and raised in the US. However I was fortunate to enjoy 2 cultures. Those are American and Puerto Rican. Now it didn’t matter whether one was born in the States or the Island because one was born American anyway. Again, I reiterate that I celebrated 2 cultures during Thanksgiving. We made Turkey with “arroz con gandules”, pasteles, pernir, potato salad as main course. We had flan or tembleque as desert and we would woof it down with “coquito”. Haaaa, my Mom made the best turkey ever.
After we were stuffed like our counterpart—The Turkey, we would play some Salsa music and dance the night away. We would play a couple favorite navidenyo (excuse spelling) songs and we would jumpstart the Christmas mood.
I am so grateful to my family for keeping the culture. Those were great times. Thanks Mom. I know you’re in heaven smiling at the Great Family Day—Happy Thanksgiving
I came here exactly on Thanksgiving 10 years ago, so the very first “American” thing I did was celebrate that holiday.
Every year after that, as it was for who knows how long before I got here, Thanksgiving dinner is always a big deal at my tia’s house. Mom and I never did anything at home, we just went to my tia’s.
Most Mexicans I know here in Los Angeles don’t even call it Thanksgiving, they just call it “Turkey Day” (pronounced in Spanish). And yes, my Chicano family has always celebrated it with all the traditional American dishes (cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, ham) along with a big pot of pinto beans and tamales.
My parents came from Puerto Rico, growing up we had pernil instead of turkey on Thanksgiving.
we always celebrated el dia del guajolote (and had to endure my dad jokingly telling us it was our birthday). and it got more so after my dad remarried into a more americanized mexican.-based family. all the traditional tday fare: turkey, stuffing, cranberries, etc. but with added mexican touches: salsa, tortillas, jalapenos, obnoxious tios. and of course, the leftover bird brings mole and tamales.
my family moved to connecticut from ecuador. we had only been in the states a couple of months when we had our first thanksgiving and we didn’t know there were traditional foods designated for the holiday. therefore, our first thanksgiving meal was a lobster dinner (we still laugh about it).
after that our thanksgiving foods have gotten more traditional. now we have turkey and lots of side dishes; the usual stuff and whatever my mom feels like making for my vegetarian sister.
Pavo day was very big with my family. We had the traditional turkey dinner, albeit modified because let’s face it, North American turkey recipes are bland as shit. Lots of garlic, adobo, mojo, coquito, mofongo, pasteles, tembleque…
Thanksgiving was so huge @ our Puerto Rican home, we tried every variation of turkey in the book. The crazy part was how Mom would add a boricua touch to every anglo recipe and make it her own. However she went overboard with the bolitas de batata, there were sweet potato balls all over the kitchen that year!
Booze made it easier to endure and nowadays I am the one making the complicated recipes, like guava glazed turkey…
Use Alt+164, Lucy…
We have cochinita pibil at my mom’s. It’s our excuse to miss work, kick back, and spend time with the family…no pilgrim stuff…
Puerto Rican American here — born, raised, and still reside in New York. We celebrate Thanksgiving and eat pernil, Turkey, pasteles, macaroni salad, cranberries, stuffing…all that good stuff baby!
Little known facts about Thanksgiving food:
Corn originally comes from Mexico. It was cultivated by the indigenous people 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.
Pumpkin originally comes from Mexico and was cultivated by the indigenous people 7,000 years ago.
Potatoes originally come from Peru and were cultivated by the indigenous people 7,000 years ago.
Squash originally comes from Mexico and was cultivated by the indigenous people 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.