Colonial Forge has a fairly diverse community. We can celebrate that by taking a different approach to a controversial holiday. My family is tired of dry turkey and a colorless assortment of food, and decided last Thanksgiving to start a new way of celebrating the holiday.
Our original idea was to pick one culture or country and try to recreate traditional foods. However, we decided for everyone to pick one food from a culture and try our hardest to recreate it, involving a lot of research and many obsessive hours on YouTube rewinding and rewatching.
My sister chose Pupusas. My dad chose American foods (very dad-typical). And I chose pork buns. Mom helped everyone.
Again, Forge is a diverse community with an array of traditions. One of our Puerto Rican students, Isabella Torres (26), talks about her family’s Thanksgiving traditions.
“We usually have family that comes from Puerto Rico and Florida and have breakfast and lunch together. Then we usually make our traditional tres leches every year.”
Thanksgiving is supposed to be the celebration of the creation of the Americas, but as a country made of immigrants, we don’t understand or know other cultures. People should want to learn about these other cultures, and we’re failing to do so as a country, so why not start with everyone’s favorite thing: food?
“Eating the same thing every year is traditional, but at the same time as an American culture, we’re growing ourselves. I think it is good to try to make new foods, especially for younger generations and families. It’s good to contribute more food to Thanksgiving because it expands the holiday itself,” Isabella “Izzy” Cooper (26) said.
And based on the people’s opinion, our traditional Thanksgiving food isn’t what it’s cracked up to be—it’s very overrated.
“Personally, I don’t like turkey. Maybe it’s that I’ve never had turkey that was cooked well, but I think it’s always pretty dry and it’s not good. I’d be open to doing both (making cultural and American foods), but I would really like to have the mac and cheese,” Emily Alonzo (25) said.
Sadly my family won’t be making cultural foods this year (we’re going to Grandma’s), but we’ll still make these foods over break. I guess the dry turkey will have to do.
