I have a lot to be thankful for this year, and all years, and I wanted to give my new friends in South Africa a proper American Thanksgiving experience. I’m the kind of person who usually just shows up, with a pie offering, and eats all the food, so preparing everything myself over my two off-days gives me more respect for hosts everywhere.
Turkey is not something one finds easily in South Africa, and I am pretty sure trying to cook one in my little kitchen and serving it to others would be akin to manslaughter. Two of my colleagues are vegetarian, and had recently given me the speech about the meat industry being one of the biggest contributors to climate change which is fueling disastrous weather events like fires and extreme storms which are literally killing people, thus eating meat = killing people. I don’t need a lecture to know their argument is correct, and I wanted to negatively impact as few lives as possible with this shared meal, so I had a go at insect gravy. Just kidding, I will reserve saving the world via insect protein for another post. Anyway, I was also vegetarian for 14 years and it’s a bummer when you can only eat the sides, and I feel much more comfortable cooking for others in that element, so we enjoyed a meat-and-palm-oil free Thanksgiving.
Apparently I am some sort of logistical domestic goddess, able to to prepare and deliver a feast for a dozen people and have everything ready and properly heated at the same time, where everything is genuinely very tasty. I did have help from an Austrian scout leader who built and handled all the fire-based cooking, and a team of international sous chefs who did quite a lot of chopping.
The Menu:
- Roasted butternut squash
- Stuffing (brown bread, homemade vegetable stock, butter fried onions and celery)
- Garlic mashed potatoes
- Mushroom gravy
- Homemade bread
- Fire-roasted corn
- Fire-roasted rosemary potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic
- For the main course, I tried to make sort of a nut loaf, but it all fell apart. However, it was still delicious. I soaked a few cups of raw, mixed nuts (almonds, macadamia, pecans, cashews) for a few hours. Then I took that water and boiled brown rice in it for 30 minutes. I strained the rice, but again reserved the water and used it to cook red lentils with some tomato paste, soy sauce, and other seasonings. Then I fried an onion and about 8 ounces of mushrooms, added everything, and mixed it all up. I poured vegetable stock over it, and put it in the fridge overnight. Before baking, I mixed in an egg and about a cup of shredded cheese. Presentation-wise, it didn’t really work. BUT IT WAS SO GOOD.
- Dessert: Apple pie, apple crisp, semi-failure whipped cream that was still yummy (I could not find heavy whipping cream, and regular cream was impossible to get fluffy enough with the tools at hand, i.e. a fork and my arm.)
Together we were two Germans, one Austrian, three French, one Brit, one Congolese, two South Africans and one American. We each expressed our thanks for our experiences and each other before dishing up way too much food. The first question the South Africans asked was, “Where is the meat?”. They shook their heads at the prospect of eating a “meal” that did not include meat, but after cautiously trying the nut mixture proclaimed that they could be vegetarians too. We spent an evening around the fire and honestly, it is one of the best Thanksgivings I have ever had.
Two days later, today, the first German returns home. Next week, the other heads to the Americas. Two of my French colleagues will soon leave for an internship in Thailand, then the Austrian departs, then me. I’m sure some paths will cross again in the future, but there is no reason to pretend we will ever all be together in a shared space again. The story of Thanksgiving we learned in school as children is really a warped viewpoint of history. As far as I understand it, there is evidence of a shared meal, but there was also war and genocide, and so much ugly history. However, as I explained, Thanksgiving in America is really a day about being with people who matter to you, being grateful for what you have and who you are becoming, and hopefully also eating way too much delicious food.
The Apartheid is over in South Africa, but its legacy of inequality is still so obviously present that it sometimes infuriates me. It can also be humbling. Around the fire, one of my South African colleagues explained to me that the Americans he meets are usually the most difficult English-speakers to understand, not because of our accent, but because we use such “educated words”, and that I’m the biggest culprit to-date. He told me that I am obviously very blessed, and he’s right. It is not that I haven’t worked hard to realize my educational goals, but I recognize that I am partially blessed due to centuries of institutional racism which set me up for a comfortable life. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I find myself constantly analyzing my speech, erm, I mean, thinking about the words I say.
Anyway, Thanksgiving is over, but it is still important to be thankful every day for the things we may not even realize we have, like vocabularies which are incomprehensible to those without tertiary education, or growing up in a world where the only person you know with HIV is Magic Johnson, or never losing a family member due to not being able to find a working car in your entire town in order to take them to the nearest hospital. I am thankful for typhoid and hepatitis vaccines, malaria tablets, and mosquito nets. I am thankful for many things, but I think most of all I am thankful for the cognizance to be thankful. Ack, sorry, I’m doing it again; when I say “cognizance”, what I mean is “understanding”.
Jen in Africa 