People of color share their multicultural thanks: Salt: NPR

These interviews are edited for more length and clarity. And I'd love to hear your stories and see pictures of your food, too! Share them on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #MyPOCThanksgiving and we can show them on NPR next week.

& # 39; The first time I had cranberry sauce, I was 35 years old & # 39;

Brenda Abdelall's goat cheese and onion pie is a must-see for Thanksgiving and inspires flavors of her Egyptian heritage. She calls this her version of "American pie".

Brenda Abdelall

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Brenda Abdelall

Brenda Abdelall's goat cheese and onion pie is a must-see for Thanksgiving and inspires flavors of her Egyptian heritage. She calls this her version of "American pie".

Brenda Abdelall

Brenda Abdelall, 37, is an American of Egyptian descent from Oakton, Virginia. She is the founder of United We Eat, a series of short films about immigrant food in the United States, and directs a blog about Middle Eastern cuisine titled MidEats.

Having grown up in Michigan, I did not have any uncles and aunts to visit during Thanksgiving, like many of my friends. [did]. So we spent with our family friends, a collection of US-Egyptian immigrants who immigrated here in the 1970s and who had a potluck. There was always turkey. My mother tried to make it as traditional as possible, but somehow [the bird] always had Arab flavors, like cumin. People brought taboulé [an herb salad], baklava, and someone would always bring kofta [a ground beef kebab].

Today, my Thanksgiving looks a lot like a traditional one, but I use ingredients from the Middle East: green beans with pomegranate molasses; onion pie with goat cheese. The first time I had cranberry sauce, I was 35 years old. We have never seen it grow on the table. Now I am making a version using pomegranate seeds and star anise. I have the most hurry of mashed potatoes.

As an immigrant girl, Thanksgiving has become a central tradition in my family. We respect the traditions of my parents, the flavors and foods they have taught us and continue to teach this to our children.

& # 39; Turkey? I've never been really in there.

Juan Diego Ramirez, 30, was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. He moved to South Los Angeles at the age of 10, where he grew up. He lives today outside of Portland and is a producer of a podcast on food and culture called Racist Sandwich and works for the Migrant Education Program in Hillsboro, Oregon.

I did not celebrate Thanksgiving before arriving in the United States. These are not holidays in Mexico. When my family celebrated Thanksgiving for the first time, we did not know what it was. We just saw that it was time to be around our family. We did not have turkey but roast chicken. And there were tamales, salsa and a drink called atole.

Over the years, the food has started to change. We incorporated turkey and mashed potatoes. We went to get the turkeys at the local church or neighborhood community center, where they gave them. Turkey? I have never been really in it. I never have any seconds. But if there are extra tamales, I'll have a few seconds about it.

"We just went to the Boston market"

Robin Ha and her mother, Cassie, at an airport in South Korea, while traveling to the United States in 1995.

Robin Ha

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Robin Ha

Robin Ha and her mother, Cassie, at an airport in South Korea, while traveling to the United States in 1995.

Robin Ha

Robin Ha, 37, is an American of Korean descent who lives in Washington, DC. She was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of 14. She is the artist and the author of Cook Korean! A cartoon with recipesand is working on a graphical memory called Almost american girl.

When my mom and I moved to America for the first time, it was just us. It seemed so fun to go through all the turkey preparations. So we went to the Boston market where we bought chicken and turkey and had dinner for ourselves. Turkey does not excite me much. It's dry and bland. Cranberry sauce was new to me too. It's strange that Americans cook sweet fruits and put them on the meat!

Today, we celebrate Thanksgiving at my mother 's boyfriend' s house. He is white and his family has lived in Virginia since the 19th century. The first year, the food was very traditional: mashed potatoes, casserole of sweet potatoes, green beans. But over the years, people have started bringing non-traditional foods. My mother and I bring Korean fried chicken. Currently, I'm going out with a half-Persian and an American. He also participates in this Thanksgiving holiday and makes Persian rice jewel.

I actually like turkey now. I look forward to the leftovers to sandwich – with the cranberry sauce!

"We must have some joke!

Carine Umuhumuza, 30, is an American woman of Rwandan origin living in Washington, DC. She and her family left Rwanda for New Hampshire at the age of 7. She is the Assistant Director of Communications at Devex, a press organization on international development.

Thanksgiving is a time when our family prepares traditional dishes that take longer, such as Isombe [a cassava dish with peanut sauce] which takes about eight hours to do. This is not something you eat on a weekday evening. Rice is still part of Thanksgiving and is a meat sauce made from onions, tomatoes, beef and bay leaves. In Rwandan culture, you can not eat without sauce!

Our family has always had turkey and mashed potatoes – but over the years, we have warmed to other dishes. One of my aunts married a white man and now we have cranberry sauce. And as my siblings and I grew up, we started to love the farce, which we learned from these very artificial Thanksgiving lunches we had at school. I would say to my mother, "We must have some joke!" I was not talking about pranks from scratch, I was talking Stove Top stuffing.

For the diaspora that comes to the United States, Thanksgiving is part of this vacation that does not feel so foreign. Families of all generations and ages come together? It's something that's happening in Rwanda, anyway. This is the best point of entry into American traditions.

"Filipino gathering … with turkey"

Policarpio PJ spread Thanksgiving, last year. The party includes a Filipino paella, a noodle dish called palabok and lumpia, fried egg rolls.

PJ Policarpio

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PJ Policarpio

Policarpio PJ spread Thanksgiving, last year. The party includes a Filipino paella, a noodle dish called palabok and lumpia, fried egg rolls.

PJ Policarpio

PJ Policarpio, 33, is an American Filipino from San Francisco. He left the Philippines to settle in the United States at the age of 13. He is one of the co-curators of the Pilipinx American Library, a collection of literature, poetry and writers from the Philippine diaspora.

Thanksgiving is essentially a Filipino gathering … with a turkey. Three or four families gather in the same space – uncles get drunk, titas and aunts talk – to feed themselves endlessly. It's very Filipino. Lately, it has become a bit like a preamble to the holidays. We draw names for Secret Santa.

Some of our staple foods for Thanksgiving: my uncle's roast beef, which I'm waiting for the most. Sometimes my dad prepares paella – it's a spanish dish but we make it to the filipino. And there is a lot of dessert. My aunt prepares the custard and my cousin prepares a cassava cake. There is alsoumpia [egg rolls] and pancit [a noodle dish].

It's the only excuse our family has for taking part in a broader American tradition, which is why we insist on having a turkey, even though it's certainly not the most popular dish. We all know that no one is going to touch him. But year after year, we have it.

Your turn

What traditional dishes will be on your family's table? Which dish do you most want to eat? Share your multicultural Thanksgiving with us on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #MyPOCThanksgiving and we will be able to present it on NPR next week.