Category: Thanksgiving Chronicles

The Expat Quest for Thanksgiving

Christina called me over to her half-basement apartment for Thanksgiving. This was my first year in Korea, 2004. She and Glen held this each year for expats and any Koreans who wanted to attend this exotic holiday with the mythical turkey beast—a foreign flightless bird not seen in a Korean refrigerator case. For a time, more turkeys existed in the Seoul Zoo than in supermarkets.
The quest for Thanksgiving is a rabid one in these parts. Expats are so culturally alienated that they cling to anything that reeks of home. Holidays are celebrated with more gusto than they were at home. Americans experience the Korean version of Thanksgiving, Chuseok.
No, they don’t because they don’t get invited to Koreans’ houses for it, and many take this time off to visit Southeast Asia.
Then Canada Day comes around—Oooh, Canadian Thanksgiving! Three Thanksgivings in one season. Yet Canadians are too nice and wait for the American one.
Soon after trying in vain to bring Halloween to Korea each year, the American and Canadian expat turns into a zombie-vampire on the hunt for turkey. They can’t explain why they want this particular poultry so badly. They just need it.
Networks were tapped. Information was passed along. Where could one get a turkey? Did anyone have a U.S. Army base connection? Did any of the foreign markets have any? Would anyone dare to get one from the black market in Namdaemun?
Am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that South Korea has a black market for foreign food? #protectionism
If one was able to get a turkey the next challenge was finding a person with an oven. Korean cuisine doesn’t use ovens. Since most non-military American expats are English teachers living in tiny dingy apartments supplied by their employers, they don’t have ovens either. The person with the oven becomes the most popular member of the community. One enterprising friend cooked an entire turkey using a toaster oven.
Hostess Christina
Christina & Glen’s Thanksgivings
Christina and Glen were longtime expats by the time I arrived. They had a robust network of friends willing to show for Thanksgiving. They had two turkeys, some basic sides, and an open bar. They only requested people bring supplemental alcohol and maybe some desserts. The second most popular people in Korea are the ones with the Costco memberships. They’re the ones who supply the pies and cookies.
Costco pies at a Maori themed Thanksgiving party at an ESL conference
The refrigerator and coolers are stocked with pitcher-sized Korean beer bottles, green bottles of soju, vodka, some gin, some whiskey. Maybe some connoisseurs brought some wine or imported beers. They were generous or foolish because those would be the first liquids to disappear.
I think Christina and Glen knew from experience to discourage the bringing of side dishes. I’ve done the expat potluck before. And without a lot of coordination, you end up with five giant bowls of mashed potatoes of varying lumpiness.
As long as there’s a bucket of butter
Turkey & Kimchi
The sociological interest comes when the Koreans show up. Either they’re attached romantically to an expat guest, a co-worker of the host, or a friend of the host. Sometimes a whole family will show up, likely because the progressively thinking father thought it would be a good cultural experience for the children, and the mother thought it would help the children’s English. The expats want the Koreans to understand why they so passionately love this holiday. They want the Koreans to wax poetic over the turkey and the glories of Western culture that would mandate such a feast.
Then we get a little self conscious. All this food is variations on beige. It’s heavy. It’s soft and lacks textural variety. It’s crowded sloppily on plates and looks like something the dog threw up—if we didn’t crave it so much. Turkey tastes like chicken the same way many exotic meats taste like chicken.
Glen finally sitting down to enjoy his meal
Even with the newfound epiphanies of how our traditions look to others, we get sorely offended when Koreans start piling kimchi on their plates. It’s like being invited to a Korean family’s celebration of Chuseok and ordering a pizza.
Can’t we just go one meal without the kimchi?
Diplomacy wins over, and some of us start agreeing that kimchi goes well with turkey. We overlook this routine cultural faux pas.
We chat with old and new friends, our slapped-together families in Korea. And then we drunkenly thank the hosts and leave—in one sudden wave.
Post-turkey conversation and lazing
The Rough Old Days
This was how I celebrated Thanksgiving my first few years. Others were willing to pay for expensive hotel buffets. To me, that’s like paying for sex. You get the biological need taken care of but not the emotional one. Since Korea didn’t recognize American Thanksgiving—why should it—we all had to work.
Thanksgiving kept fading away for me. Thanksgiving dinners devolved into going out for some smoked turkey BBQ and beers at a local Korean joint. Even that stopped. Christina and Glen broke up and moved away years ago. Most of my friends in Anyang are gone. I’m not in the mood to make more friends who will just leave in a year. I have my own Korean family now—and my wife hates turkey.
Thanksgiving Isn’t Given. You Make It.
I find it odd and amusing to see Americans back home treating Thanksgiving as if the whole world celebrates it. It’s such a big freakin’ deal. All the food blogs and magazines promote their Thanskgiving recipes—as if there are that many more variations left. Hipsters and cynics complain about being around their families, especially the brother-in-law who feels like it’s a good time to test the loud theories he has on what’s wrong with the world—theories he got verbatim from political talk radio.
The expat has no opportunity to be with family. It’s when this family is not available, when these traditions require a lot—a shitload lot—more work and creativity that the expat learns to truly be grateful. Things the expat never paid much mind to, even scoffed at, become suddenly precious.
As Thanksgivings pass, the bullshit fades. The turkey, the cranberry sauce, the football. The expat has been away from these things for so long that these are just layers of chocolate coating. The center is that feeling of family and belonging. The expat gets it.
I have no plans this year (2012) for Thanksgiving, even though turkeys and turkey dinners are more plentiful. Christmas has become my big holiday, and I started getting into that the day after Halloween. I don’t care. The expat has to create his own culture around him from scratch, so I choose to start Christmas early so I can savor its short life in the year. This year, though, we’ll be traveling to America for the big holiday. I haven’t been in America for Christmas in almost a decade, and my little family has never been to America. This will be a big deal.
So this Thanksgiving, I likely will catch a bit of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade streaming live—in the evening–or watch a bit torrent I downloaded in 2010. Likely I’ll be busy packing Korean ramen and getting my family to score some kimchi in America so my wife can have some with her turkey.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 2017
It’s been a few years since I’ve posted this. The kernel came from a friend who was, at the time, an editor at BonAppetit.com. When I pitched this idea to him, he felt it was too bleak for Bon Appetit, but he encouraged me to post it anyway.
Things have gotten better.
It’s easy to get a turkey these days at Costco, as long as you do it in October. Most every western-styled restaurant has a Thanksgiving event. I am still of the solvency that a restaurant Thanksgiving is like paying for sex. The trick is, how good is the sex you’re paying for.
I still miss Christina and Glen. They were the rocks I clung to in my early years. They have each gone to better futures.
The past couple of years, I have celebrated Thanksgiving with Korean/American neighbors. As I mentioned in my post, we’re a little more hardcore about it. We all have children with mixed backgrounds. We want them to immerse themselves in Korean culture while dipping their toes into our endemic cultures.
The past two years, the turkey has been good. But really the food hasn’t been the priority. It’s been the family. We truly create family wherever we go. It’s so cliche, but I’m thankful for them. I play the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on YouTube. No one pays attention but the Americans, but it’s fun in its monotony. “SpongeBob’s balloon is coming!”
I’ll admit that I feel an advantage over my biological family. The group I celebrate with comes from various backgrounds. We had a Louisiana gumbo and a Canadian maple glazed turkey. How FREAKING awesome is that?
The discussion wasn’t over Trump but over apartment prices, which is the top concern in Korea. (not North Korea, asswipes)
It’s been good. I love this family we’ve created. We had an American-Canadian-Korean Thanksgiving this year. No kimchi, but there were Chuseok style skewers. Quite welcome, because THEY’RE AWESOME. The biggest controversy in our Thanksgiving was whether you’d eat your skewer like corn on the cob or deep throat it.
And as a joke, I gave the kids popcorn as hors d’oeuvres as a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
THE POINT IS
Korea has gotten a shit ton better in the few years since I wrote this. I sorta miss the scrappy days, but no–not so much. Christina had an actual mountain spring water source coming from a rubber tube. That was cool. I miss her. I miss that time. I miss the scrappiness of the people. These days expats in Korea are WAY too entitled. They don’t appreciate what their forebears bore to establish this firmament of Thanksgiving. They whine. They rant.
But they were never here back then.
Please folks. This was the point of this whole post. It’s about BEING THANKFUL.
I love what this amazing country has given me. I love how much it has changed. I love the revolving door of friends that have entered and exited my life. You have all have made me who I am. It’s an epic tale.
I look forward to epic tales to come.
November 19, 2012
Korean Kitchen Hacking: The Turducken Roll
Being Korean American, my family had a lot of learning to do in the American culture department. Peeled apple on a chopstick was my lollipop. I once heard Oprah say that moms who lovingly cut the crust off their kids’ sandwiches – THAT was love. I needed to know mom loved me so I got her on that right away. Christmas was an awkward time when we’d all sit around and stare at each other before slowly receding to our rooms to read or study. There was one time we tried to do presents, and I got wire hangers. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the trauma of that gem of an experience. Perhaps the most successful example of how we adapted to the American way of life is Thanksgiving. Once my siblings and I left home to attend college as far away as possible from Texas (Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago), we’d gather at my oldest sister’s house in Philadelphia to do the thanksgiving. It was a perfect holiday. No parents and the freedom to cook amazing thanksgiving dishes we hadn’t had a chance to cook yet. It’s how I discovered how to roast a turkey. We made a green bean casserole that actually tasted good, and it finally made sense to me why people ate them.

Since coming to Korea, I haven’t done Thanksgiving. My family here is Korean, and asking them to celebrate Thanksgiving for my sake would be like asking them to observe Kwansaa. But this is the first year that my sister has come to live with me in Korea. For us, two is more than enough family to do Thanksgiving. Of course, that number quickly became ten as close friends were invited to celebrate with us.
Turkey is essential to Thanksgiving. That’s why it’s called Turkey Day. Haddon Supermarket in Oksu-dong has huge turkeys for 125,000 won. More than the fact that I don’t want to spend an obscene amount on turkey, I have no way for cooking it. I only have a small convection oven. So, I found some large turkey breasts at High Street Market in Itaewon, and decided I’d stretch my won by making turducken rolls. For those of you who don’t know, turducken is a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. I was impressed until I read about rôti sans pareil (roast without equal). In the 17th century, a French gastronomist stuffed seventeen birds inside each other. Half of these birds are now extinct.
To start, mix together the garlic powder, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper. Keep the seasoning in a bowl to season each of the meats easily. Once you’re down with the turducken, the seasoning will be cakey with raw poultry juices, so throw it out.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cover the turkey breast with a layer of plastic wrap. Grab a heavy rolling pin or a heavy-bottomed saucepan and pound the turkey breast to an even thickness. Do the same with the duck and chicken. In the pictures below, there are three turkey breasts and three chicken breasts because I’m tripling the recipe to feed ten people.

I couldn’t find duck breast so I used sliced duck.
Lay out the bacon strips side by side with a length of twine running under the middle of each bacon slice. The twine should be cut so that it’s about two inches longer than the bacon slice on both ends. If you’re using toothpicks, you can skip this step.

On top of the bacon, center the turkey breast. First season the turkey breast with a few healthy pinches of the garlic powder, salt and pepper seasoning. Spoon about 1/2 – 3/4 cup of the prepared stuffing and spread it into an even layer. I used boxed stuffing, and made a separate stuffing to be served with the meal. Whatever stuffing you decide to use, be sure it has small croutons. You can also use a rice stuffing.

Next, top the turkey and stuffing with the duck. Season it. Then top it with a thinner layer of stuffing, using about half a cup of stuffing.

Layer with the chicken breast. Season. Spread the stuffing but use a very small amount.
Roll the two long sides up like a taco shell and fold it into a roll. Bring up the two sides of the bacon to wrap the turducken roll. Then use the twine to tie the turducken up. Or use toothpicks to secure.

So cute I wanted to coddle it over my shoulder like my little bacon baby.
Place the turducken in a roasting pan. Tent a sheet of foil over the turducken so that it doesn’t burn. Cook for 45 minutes then remove the foil and spoon the pan drippings all over the top of the roll so it doesn’t dry out. Cook for another 30 minutes or so until the internal temperature of the roll reaches 165 degrees F (74 degrees C).
Let the roll rest for 10-15 minutes. Then serve. Use the pan drippings to make a quick gravy.
Three Birds and A Pig Gravy
Pan drippings (about 1/4 cup)
4 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken stock or broth
Over medium heat, whisk the flour into the pan drippings to create the roux. Whisk for about two minutes until the flour is cooked and the roux is a nice, golden brown paste.
Then whisk in the chicken stock/broth. Bring to a boil then simmer until the mixture is reduced by a third. Season with salt and pepper. You can choose to strain the gravy if you want it perfectly smooth.
All the things that still need to finish in the oven (except the pumpkin pie).
I look like a hungry homeless person because I had been cooking for TWO DAYS STRAIGHT.
Served over a bed of smoked oyster and bacon stuffing.
December 5, 2011
Kimchi Stuffing
Posted by Tammy

I didn’t have time to make a YouTube video version of this recipe before Thanksgiving, but I didn’t want the recipe to collect “dust” on my computer’s virtual shelf so I submitted my kimchi stuffing recipe to Food52‘s Thanksgiving stuffing recipe contest. I made it for my family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas and the guests were surprised at how much they liked it. They were also surprised it didn’t turn them into fire-breathing dragons.
The kimchi flavor in this recipe is subtle. It’s a perfect opportunity to introduce the flavor of kimchi to your spice-adverse family members. If your family and friends love spicy foods, you can either add an additional cup of kimchi or replace the black pepper with Korean pepper powder (고추가루/gochugaru) for an additional kick.
INGREDIENTS
- 12 oz. seasoned stuffing mix
- 2 onions (diced)
- 5 garlic cloves (minced)
- 1 cup toasted pine nuts (or walnuts)
- 1 tsp. black pepper
- 1 tsp. dried oregano
- 1 tsp. dried thyme
- 1 cup (배추 김치) baechu kimchi/nappa cabbage kimchi (chopped)
- ½ cup (신고 배 주스) Korean pear juice (or orange juice)
- 2 sticks butter (melted)
- 14 oz. chicken broth
- 1 tbsp sesame seed as optional garnish
DIRECTIONS
1. Mix the stuffing, onions, garlic, walnuts, pepper, oregano and thyme together in a large bowl.
2. Add the kimchi, pear juice, butter and broth. Mix well.
3. Transfer stuffing to a 13 x 9 baking dish and cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees in the center rack of your oven.
4. Remove foil and bake for 5 more minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
Based on a recipe from Granny Choe.
December 31, 2009
Big Hominid's Thanksgiving
I find it fascinating watching people adapt their cultures to different cultures. In America, I remember a few instances, like the Brazilians next door having their BBQ parties (amazing!). My Somalian friend Taj doing his evening prayers using pizza boxes as a prayer mat when I worked at Domino’s. The Pakistani family who I occasionally delivered pizzas to, holed up in a motel room that emitted an enticing cloud of curry when they opened the door.
(Man, I only delivered pizzas for nine months over ten years ago, but I still have many stories.)
The other half is watching people bring their cultures to Korea. It’s one thing to watch foreigners come into your territory. It’s another thing when you’re the foreigner.
The Americans really go nuts at this time. I truly think so. We have to have turkey or some kind of tradition in some form around the fourth Thursday in November. I pick up little anecdotes here and there. Jennifer from Seoul Survivors planned to make a carrot cake for her co-worker Thanksgiving. There was a get together of folks in Itaewon tonight that I had to pass on–a potluck dinner. People have emailed me or have casually sniffed around for any event where turkey was involved.
Big Hominid made his own Thanksgiving dinner.
He is showing himself to be a pretty competent and, dare I say, passionate cook. I have been enjoying his food blog entries.
He made a Thanksgiving dinner at home with whatever he could get his hands on. And I do want to know where he got that Jimmy Dean sausage. I don’t remember seeing that at Costco. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough.
His students, so I hear, have ravaged his pumpkin pie.
Oh, and that’s another thing I’ve noticed in my little realm. Eun Jeong, my girlfriend who turns her nose up at half the Western foods I cook, also ripped into the pumpkin pie I made a couple of weeks ago.
It’s funny how this came about. Eun Jeong’s school tried half-heartedly to celebrate Halloween. Yet there are no foreign teachers there, so, well, there weren’t many firsthand references to draw from. It’s like trying to celebrate Chuseok with no Koreans around to tell you how to do it right.
Eun Jeong’s boss had it in her mind to let the kids make their own jack-o-lanterns. The kids made their designs on little pumpkins. Eun Jeong, poor thing, had to carve every single one of them.
There went out any hope that Eun Jeong would learn to enjoy this holiday.
She returned home with a few “mistake” pumpkins. She peeled them, cut them up, and put them in a plastic bag. I turned them into a pumpkin pie and Chez Pim’s Coconut-Pumpkin Panna Cotta (which turned out to be more of a soup since I didn’t add enough gelatin). It actually got a few raves from her.
With the pumpkin pie, I used a good recipe that reduced the liquid in the pumpkin itself to create a more pumpkiny pumpkin pie. I added more cinnamon than the recipe called for, though.
The other part didn’t work out so well. It’s hard to get shortening in Korea, so a proper flaky pie crust is hard to make. I have used butter in the past, but it comes out dry. I found a recipe that suggested using oil, specifically olive oil, to make the crust. The dough had the consistency of a loose pizza dough. It wasn’t pliable and workable, and I had to press it into the pan. When it came out–it tasted like pumpkin pie with loads of olive oil.
Nonetheless, it was my first pumpkin pie made from fresh pumpkins. It wasn’t that hard to pull off. And Eun Jeong found that spice-laden American desserts don’t always taste like Chinese medicine.
November 24, 2007
Maori Thanksgiving
Just a note that this entry is participating in the Morsels & Musings Festive Food Fair.
If you were following from the main blog, we were in Cheonan, South Korea, at SunMoon University (owned by the Moonies) for a KOTESOL (Korean Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference.
The big event was the New Zealand Māori hangi style barbecue Thanksgiving dinner. It’s also called umu in Hawaii and other countries of the Pacific.
Okay, so this is how it’s done. You could say it’s the recipe.
1. Dig a pit in the ground. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be big enough for the food and stones that come later.
2. Heat rocks (preferably igneous rocks, like lava rocks) over a fire until they’re white hot.
3. Line the pit with the rocks.
4. Place the food, wrapped in foil, in the pit. In this case, we had sweet potatoes, chickens, a whole cut up pig, and a few turkeys.
5. Cover the pit with something like metal sheeting. Then cover with dirt.
6. Cook for two to three hours.
I arrived during the cooking part. You see, we were busy much of the day, and I missed the start of the cooking. I wish I was there. The guy in charge of this was from the Cook Islands himself. He got stuck in traffic, though. So dinner got off to a late start.
When the conference was over, Aaron was worried because the food was far from ready. The attendees entered the cafeteria in the imposing “Main Building” on campus.
There wasn’t much Aaron could do. He handled it as best he could, though. He announced that dinner was running late and would be ready — um, in an hour. People groaned. Check out the lady in the foreground.
Aaron offered to refund the meal tickets. A few took him on the offer but not many. One of the attendees volunteered to entertain everyone with his saxophone. I wanted to go down and see the cooking.
I found it in the back of the building on a plot of land that looked like it was used for farming.
A small group had gathered, enjoying the fire and breaking the university’s dry campus policy. The food was buried in front of the fire in the picture. People didn’t know and kept walking on it.
This was another example of how glitches become blessings. The original idea was to have the food waiting for us in the cafeteria. The delay caused everyone to come outside and enjoy the atmosphere of cooking food in a pit.
It was fun, but we were also HUNGRY. All we had to eat all day was snacks from the inconveniently located convenience store. One of the Korean organizers said that we should just go ahead and dig up the food.
Break out the shovels, everyone!
Chris (left) helped with the digging.
As did I. With all these guys in suits digging, it looked like a late night groundbreaking ceremony for a shopping mall.
I started smelling roasted meat. It smelled good. Then we got steam!
The cook is the guy in shorts on the left.
Everyone watched in anticipation the unveiling of the food.

Oh yeah, can you smell it? There are some pictures that you can even smell on a computer screen.
Piggy looked like he’d seen better days. The sight made me want to look for someone with a conch shell.
(Don’t expect to get that reference.)
The meat was loaded on plastic dishwasher trays, I assume, and carried into the building and up the elevator to the fifth floor cafeteria.
Along with Piggy.
I went to go get a new supply of batteries for the camera from the car. When I returned, there was a horde with plates, grasping for meat.
Despite getting fresh batteries for the camera, my pictures didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. It’s a food blog entry with bad blurry close ups of the food, such as this one.
This one.
And this one.
Keep in mind, I was being jostled by a lot of English teachers who hadn’t tasted turkey in YEARS. And I was being pushed aside by Koreans who wanted to find what this big hoopla about turkey was about.
I did get some decent shots of salad.
And a pig head with pies.
The pies were from Costco and was another treat in a country where most Westerners don’t have ovens in their homes.
Poor Ben had just gotten his plate filled and was about to head to a table when he was recruited for turkey carving.
I’ve never seen such anger repression in Ben. He did finally get to eat.

In fact, since some people left and there was so much meat, they were forcing it on us.
And let me tell you this. My first hÄngi food experience was amazing. This created the smoky barbecue flavor while retaining a lot of moisture in the meat. The chicken breast was not dry. Granted, a few things were undercooked because we were short on time. They had to steam one of the turkeys in the kitchen to get it to cook all the way through.
I didn’t have any turkey. The pork blew it away, in my opinion. I went up to the carver with my plate, and I saw him peeling some crispy fatty skin off the meat.
“What would you like.”
“Could I have some meat with the skin on please.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, really.”
I didn’t gross anyone out by snagging myself a foot or carving a cheek off the pig’s face. It was the most amazing pork I had ever tasted. I’m pretty sure of it. Ben and the Chrisses agreed. It was pure aromatic earthiness. The smell of the pig and the oven stayed with me the rest of the evening. It’s been over twenty-four hours, and the taste is still lingering in my mouth. I want more.
I’m definitely going to more of the conferences.
November 26, 2006