Run, Lucy, Run

The Exotic Foods of America

November 29th, 2006

Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday of mine for many reasons, but primarily for the food.  Now that’s not anything terribly new and exciting, I know.  Ooooh!  You like turkey and stuffing?  How original….

But Thanksgiving dinner has a special significance for me.  Growing up, I ate Indian food just about every night for dinner.  My dad wanted Indian food when he came home from work and my Mom cooked it.  At least until they stopped speaking to each other, but that’s an entirely different story.  I loved it, I still love Indian food above any other cuisines, it just feels like home to me.   The sole exceptions to this family routine were dinner at a friend’s house or the occasional pizza or McDonald’s (my mom now swears she had no idea back then how bad McNuggets were for us otherwise they never woud have passed my lips).  When we went out to eat, we would end up having some sort of Asian food, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, which was great but not really that much of a stretch for those of us accustomed to spicy food.  One thing is for sure, we never hung out at any greasy spoon diners and shoveled good ol’ American food into our faces.

When I moved to New York for college, I became good friends with another violinist in my teacher’s studio.  J was Chinese (actually, I’m pretty sure she still is) and like me, grew up mostly eating the food of her culture.  As we got to know the city better, on the nights we weren’t drunk, we would spend a lot of time at Tom’s Restaurant.   If you’ve ever watched Seinfeld, you probably recognize this place.  Tom’s wasn’t anything fancy but we loved it.  This is where J and I would go for what we called our “exotic” American meals.  We would order strange and fascinating things like Salisbury Steak, Reuben sandwiches and split pea soup.  For us this was the most foreign food we could dream of.  We had heard our American friends talk about it growing up and occasionally tried a few of these delicacies at their houses, but this was an opportunity to immerse ourselves in one of the few aspects of American culture that we had never fully experienced growing up in Asian households.  Up until this time, Thanksgiving had been the only time we had tasted traditional American food and even then there were usually a few good curries on the table surrounding the turkey my mother had cooked.  I have vivid memories to this day of watching my father carve our Thanksgiving bird, surrounded by ladies in saris. But the turkey had no cumin or cardamom, just plain bird, which I think, quite frankly, confused many of the sari-clad ladies.  But now, I could order turkey dinner any day of the week, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy.
So, as our friends at school who had moved to New York from the midwest discovered sushi and tried eating Ethiopian food with their hands,  J and I explored American diner food with great zeal.  For years, I ate at diners all over New York and ALWAYS had an extra side of mashed potatoes and gravy.  Eventually, I came to find my true love in stuffing, which is unfortunately hard to find at restaurants so I just poured what little spare money I had into my Stove Top habit (ah, the days of fast metabolism).  Later, I would move on to study the finer points of Hamburger Helper and perfect the art of making Rice-a-Roni.  I had watched ads for these things on TV for years, and never been allowed to try them.  But now, free from the shackles of my parent’s house, I could go hog wild, running down the middle of Broadway with a bag full of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

I’ve moved on from the days of dinner in a box for the most part, but I still find turkey dinner irresistible.  I have yet to actually cook one myself, but if I walk down the prepared food aisle in Whole Foods and see turkey, gravy and stuffing, I know that it’s all coming home with me.  I have a feeling that once our son is a little older, I will probably take the plunge and cook the whole Thanksgiving meal, just so I can say I did it.  And maybe I’ll throw a curry in on the side, just for nostalgia.

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