On Nov. 24th, when everyone else is stuffing their face with turkey, cranberries, and stuffing, and enjoying the deliciousness that is pumpkin pie, my family will be experiencing the amazing delicacies of French Cuisine. Not because we’re French, but because we celebrate Thanksgiving differently than everyone else.
We spend our Thanksgiving eating foods from different countries, as well as learning different facts about each country. In the past five Thanksgivings, we have eaten food from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Denmark, and Egypt. Each experience has been unique and equally amazing, because we’re not just looking up random recipes and creating them. My family is able to experience different foods we probably would never have tried if we had not started this tradition.
It started 6 years ago when my dad came home from work and announced we weren’t having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner anymore. The happiness I felt of no longer having to pick at random veggies and fill up on dessert cannot be put in to words, as I hate most of the food served, especially turkey and stuffing. My dad no longer saw the point of buying and cooking food half of us didn’t eat, leaving for left overs that were barely touched, and eventually being tossed to the dogs before it could go to waste. No, that year we were going to do something different.
We decided to go in alphabetical order, and from there we needed to choose which country we wanted to do that began with the letter A. We had options – Algeria, Argentina, Aruba, and Australia – but in the end we chose Afghanistan, because we thought it would be different from most other foods that we had tried before. And from there we just kept going.
This year is France and no one is more excited than I am because all I’ve wanted these last two years is to skip ahead to the letter F, and experience French food. Especially, because I am absolutely in love with Crème Brulee and it is the one thing that I absolutely want for dessert this year. And while it’s gotten harder to do in-depth research of every country we experience in recent years, we still find one fact or topic that intrigues us about the country we are doing and discuss it at Thanksgiving dinner.
This tradition is what I look forward to every year because my family gets to experience foods and create amazing memories with each other, which some families never get to do.
This Thanksgiving I am thankful that I finally get to eat French food and that I get to share this experience with my family, and hopefully sometime in the future I’ll be able to share the experience with a family of my own.