Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Or, if you’re not from the US and didn’t just spend Thursday gorging yourselves on turkey and a litany of side dishes, happy… weekend…or whatever.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It’s literally a holiday dedicated to eating food.  Okay, it’s supposed to be about being grateful for what you have and family and junk (or pilgrims and genocide), but let’s be honest…it’s about the food.

My mom usually goes nuts on Thanksgiving and makes every side dish under the sun while yelling at me to get the hell out of the kitchen and STOP PICKING AT THE SIDE DISHES, SET THE TABLE AND GO SIT DOWN IN THE LIVING ROOM.  She usually doesn’t like it when I help.

But now, she wants to use the excuse that’s she’s getting too old to cook all this food on her own and that she needs help.  She’s lying about being old, but I will gladly snatch up an excuse to be allowed in her kitchen and wreak havoc.

Also, a big chunk of my family is going to dumb Virginia for Thanksgiving so that means less food that my mom is cooking but I’m still going to help out, of course.

We talked about what we should make for Thanksgiving this year and decided to just hit the basics – Turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, asparagus, seafood casserole, kimchi, and pumpkin pie.  We also planned for Whitney to bring Ratatouille.  So yeah, the basics.

A lot of the sides my mom prepares are pretty basic, straight from the box/can, kind of stuff.  I can’t blame her.  My mom only learned to cook American food after she came to the states and most of it was learning about preparing canned vegetables, making mashed potatoes, and cooking meat “American style”.  She learned this from my grandmother who grew up poor af and that’s how she learned to cook. Also when you’re cooking American food for your Korean family members you take advantage of the fact that they almost never eat American food willingly and cheat as much as possible.  Also canned cranberry sauce is king, FIGHT ME.

I’m warning you all now, I did not help out as much as I intended to.  My mom is a liar.

Wednesday Night

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On Wednesday, my mom baked the pumpkin pie before I even got to the house and told me that the only thing we needed to do that night was make the stuffing and clean the turkey.  “Okay, cool! How can I help with the turkey?” I asked.  “You can’t, I’ll just do it,” my mom replied.  Okay fine, I’ll just get up in your grill and take pictures and ask you how you learned to make turkey.  She literally takes out the neck and giblets and starts boiling them on the stove so that she can shred the neck and put it in the stuffing.  She saved the giblets to give to my friend’s dog because she secretly loves doggies.

And how can you not LOVE this face? He was the most polite dinner guest. 11/10 would invite him again. Also his mom can come too I guess.

Anyway, she then takes a lemon and rubs the turkey all over with lemon and lets the cavity drain for a few minutes before lathering that thing up in butter, covering it with salt and pepper, and setting it in the roasting tub with carrots and onions.  Then she makes it a little tent out of aluminum foil and lets it sit like that until it’s time to get tossed in to the oven.

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After the turkey was prepped, we made boxed stuffing.  And by we, I mean she let me open the packages and pour the mix into the boiling water and then she wouldn’t let me do anything else.  Ugh.

My mom also tried to make some milk gelatin dessert that you serve with frozen strawberries but she messed it up, and it was more like merengue soup with gelatin chunks in it.  It was hilarious.  To be fair, the instructions weren’t very clear…

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So yeah, apparently you’re just supposed to let the gelatin mix cool down so that you don’t cook your egg whites when you mix them together.  Don’t let your gelatin mix get firm, y’all.  Unless you want chunky dessert soup.  We’ll try again at Christmas.

Thursday

So I woke up at 7 am the next day because on Wednesday night my mom said she’s just going to get started whenever she wakes up and start preparing all the sides and put the turkey in the oven and I figured that she would wake me up when she woke up or something.

NOPE.  I was wrong

She had already par-boiled the broccoli, prepped the potatoes, cooked the asparagus and was finishing off the seafood casserole when I woke up.  She woke up at 5.  So I asked her what I could help with next and she tells me, “Oh, nothing right now…do you want ramen and the leftover fried rice for breakfast?”  Yes.  Yes I do.

Over breakfast, we talked about what needed to be done and if she had forgotten to buy anything yesterday, and it turned out that she needed milk.  Okay, I can do that.  “Well, why don’t you take a shower and go get the milk after?” she says.  Okay! Quick shower, drive to the gas station up the street, come home…She’s prepped the green bean casserole and the corn and is prepping the broccoli casserole.  When I asked again if I could help, she said that I could crush the Ritz crackers and mix them with butter for the topping.  Thanks, mom.  The only other thing that she let me do that day was mash the potatoes after she cooked them and set the table.  🙄

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While we waited for all the sides to warm up and for my cousins to appear, my mom decided to make Kimchi Buchimgae (김치부침개), which is basically a pancake made of flour, kimchi, egg, water, and whatever else you want.  My mom decided to put in some o-jingo (오징어), AKA dried squid, in her pancake.  She let me cut the o-jingo, which is why the pancakes tasted so good. 💁🏻

While we feasted on pre-lunch pancakes, my cousins finally decided to show up and it was time to set the table and put out all the dishes.

We ended up with a great spread! I had to rush to take pictures, and my uncle wouldn’t move but everything was delicious!  Creamy, slightly salty casseroles and turkey with tangy kimchi and cranberry sauce and buttery mashed potatoes and sweet corn and stuffing are wonderful. 🤤

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Seriously guys, eat your turkey with kimchi, there’s nothing like it.

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So, yeah! Thanksgiving! Family and whatever.  Food!

Let me know what you had on your table in the comments section below! And remember to subscribe! Or something.