I bet the Pilgrims never thought their descendants would be thankful for this staple!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am frontloading my greetings since I’m not sure that I will post again before Thursday. I did, however, choose the worst day to travel home, so you might just get treated to an ongoing commentary of me making fun of the occupants of National Airport tomorrow afternoon. Like my teacher said to me today “Tu es mechante!”
So today was one of those days in class whereby explaining something about myself in minute detail, I learned something about my culture at the same time. The subject was Thanksgiving food, and what we typically eat at this time each year.
If you are talking to a typical American, rattling off what usually congeals on your Thanksgiving table is pretty simple. Switch that person out with one from a different culture (in my case, a Senegalese person), and this becomes a story that is wrought with tangent after tangent- to an end where you find yourself discussing the occurrence of autism in Africa and don’t know how you arrived at that subject. But I won’t bore you with this stream of consciousness. Instead I want to talk about Velveeta.
My teacher, Marie, asked me what people bring to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Instantly a picture of my father’s twice-baked potatoes, and its artery-clogging twin, baked mashed potatoes (if that is what you would call them), appeared in my head. I foolishly started by asking Marie if she was familiar with twice-baked potatoes, and there my troubles began.
How does one explain my father’s culinary inventions? Well, it started innocently enough with me explaining how you bake potatoes, cut them in half, and scoop out the flesh. Next came the mention of mayonnaise, seasoned salt, butter and Velveeta- Tu connais Velveeta? (Have you heard of Velveeta?)
What exactly is Velveeta, and better yet, how do you explain “cheese food” in French? I don’t think it’s possible, and judging from the look of disgust on Marie’s face, I’m pretty sure that the Francophone world is happy enough not knowing this information anyways. Instead, I moved on to the mashed potato dish, where I used my language skills to artfully describe the pool of melted butter that adorns a peak of mashed potato that is served with a generous dusting of Shake and Bake. Tu connais Shake and Bake?
Wow. Once we deconstruct the components of the elaborate dishes that encapsulate our American dinner table, it is quite apparent that we eat some truly otherworldly stuff (and we are kinda fat as a result). No wonder I now fill my plate with a pathetic sliver of turkey, a dozen peas, and then dive into my mother’s divine apple pie and whatever other sweet stuff I can find within arm’s reach. Hey, I’m not saying I’m any better on this fat consumption thing…
Just like the fried Spam sandwiches that I used to eat as a child, I no longer find pleasure in consuming Velveeta-based products. You lose the iron stomach somewhere during the teenage drinking years, and that sun has long since set for me.
Despite all of heart attack-fostering Thanksgiving side dishes, I’m still very much looking forward to spending the holidays with my highly entertaining family. Just in time for Thanksgiving, a “rescue” pot-bellied pig will be added to the lineup (that’s for family members, not the dishes, people). I’ll be sure to bring my camera, and further distort Marie’s understanding of a traditional Thanksgiving meal. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A belated posting of the 2009 twice baked potatoes! Dad was conscientious enough to differentiate the potatoes without onions from the ones that had them…