Holiday Tradition Roundtable: Hear from Other Moms Traditions They Cherish
What does Thanksgiving mean to you? What are the traditions that really resonate with you and what do you remember from Thanksgiving growing up? I have four guests on today and they share their memories of Thanksgiving-what it means to them; and how they carry on traditions in their homes today.
Anna's flan recipe:
Transcript of this Episode
Andrea Heyman 00:00 What does Thanksgiving mean to you? What are the traditions that really resonate with you? And what do you remember from Thanksgiving from growing up? Today I have four guests on, and they share their memories of thanksgiving and what it means to them, and then how they carry on their traditions in their homes today.
Adventures In Feeding My Family is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman. And I've been a registered dietitian for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges and tumor that comes along with trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests will discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them.
So first, I want to tell you a little bit about Thanksgiving for me. So my parents were divorced when I was pretty young. And so once my parents were divorced, my dad actually lived pretty far away. So I only remember one Thanksgiving with him until I was older until I was like later in high school. And so growing up, it was really just my mom and I. And she was a single mom. So lots of people, lots of friends and co workers would invite us to Thanksgiving every year. And I think one year we went to three Thanksgivings in one day, seriously. But normally, we would go to two, we would go to Thanksgiving that was like a lunch Thanksgiving. And then we go to another one that was more at the dinner time hour. And one year we went to these friends of ours. And I guess the mom wanted all the kids to get out of the house so that she could finish getting things ready. So somebody took a bunch of us kids to the bowling alley, because surprisingly, the bowling alley was actually open that day. But we went bowling. And I literally bowled the most ridiculous out of this world awesome bowling game. And I was thinking I was in middle school for sure. And the funny thing is, I think I remember I did score a 171, which is pretty incredible. And then I went back to school that following morning. And in one of my classes, we had this substitute teacher and the substitute teacher is taking role. And finally he gets to me and says my name. And I, you know, I acknowledge that I was there. And he says, You bowled an incredible game on Thursday. And I was like, what ?how do you know that. And it turned out that that substitute teacher also worked at the bowling alley. So I felt like the celebrity famous person for having this awesome bowling game. So that's one of my really incredible memories.
So my first guest is actually my mom. And I've never had her on the show before. So this is her first debut. But I'm sure I'll have her back to talk about other topics as well. So my mom was born in Mexico and moved to the US when she was six. So she tells her story of how when she initially lived here, and they didn't celebrate any Thanksgiving traditions and really didn't understand what it was. And then eventually, over the years, began to adopt many of the Thanksgiving traditions. Hi, Mom, it's really fun to have you here.
Teresa Elguezabal 04:05 Well, thanks for having me on your podcast.
Andrea Heyman 04:09 So you How old were you when you moved to the United States?
Teresa Elguezabal 04:13 I was six years old.
Andrea Heyman 04:15 And do you remember your first Thanksgiving here?
Teresa Elguezabal 04:20 Well, there was no we didn't celebrate any Thanksgiving, in fact, didn't even know about Thanksgiving until we had been in the United States for about three years. And by then we lived in what I call my hometown in America in a Nyssa Oregon and Eastern Oregon. And what I remember is that the church that we Catholic church that we attended, held a Thanksgiving dinner the Sunday before and now we didn't go because we either had to be members of some kind of organization or had to pay for it. But they had leftovers The priest brought over large sheet pans of leftover Thanksgiving food. And most of it was gravy, or dressed and dressing. And we didn't like it. He was so new to you. It was so new. And we thought it lacked flavor, we were used to more flavor in our meals. And everything was mushy, like the gravy and the dressing, the mashed potatoes, everything was most things were mushy. So so we didn't like it in that usually there was a little bit of meat that was left over. But my even that was kind of dry. And so my mother would cut it up and saute it in some oil along with onions and garlic and tomatoes and peppers, and basically make fajitas out of it. So that that was and we had several Thanksgiving meals like that when the church had leftovers. We became participants in the Thanksgiving holiday traditional Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, basically when we started growing up, because we started going to poems of other people friends, and so we kind of learned what the Thanksgiving meal was like. So my mother started fixing a Thanksgiving turkeys. I remember my dad used to work at the sugar factory a couple of winter seasons. And often the sugar factory management would give their workers a turkey. So we had the turkey, we cooked it up. And we still had difficulty enjoying the taste of it. But especially the especially the dressing until at some point my mother found a solution. So in addition to the bread, the dried bread, toasted bread, with seasonings and onions and celery, she took a pork chop, not very kosher, a pork chop and seared it. And then put the pork chop, partially cooked pork chop into the bird along with everything else and then roasted it. And then when it was all cooked, she took out the dressing and the pork chop cut up the pork chop into tiny little pieces. And I mixed it in with a dressing. And that made it really really good.
Andrea Heyman 07:31 Tell me at what point did you really feel like you were celebrating Thanksgiving? How old were you?
Teresa Elguezabal 07:38 Oh, I was an adult. It was when I was an adult. And I think it was because when I got married, your dad's family celebrated Thanksgiving. And so then I knew what it was like. And all the other pieces of a meal that went with it like the the cranberry sauce and the jello mold that your grandmother pine used to make. And so then we all started to as we as we grew and had frequented the homes of other people who had been celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and the traditional meal for for years and years. As we became more familiar with it, then we started doing it. We did we did it ourselves. We still just it up with a pork chop. And we used salsa. And we had sour cream to put on the vegetables. But it was our Thanksgiving meal.
Andrea Heyman 08:38 Thanks, Mom. Thanks for sharing your story. Next, my guest is Shawna who shares her tradition of keeping a Thanksgiving journal. So what that means and she'll go into more detail, but she takes this journal every year, wherever she is for Thanksgiving. And whoever's there, whether it's family or friends will write in the journal and share what they are thankful for that particular year. Welcome Shawna. I'm so glad you can join us today.
Shawna Scafe 09:13 Thanks for having me.
Andrea Heyman 09:15 And today we're talking about Thanksgiving traditions. And you have told me about one of your family's Thanksgiving traditions. Can you tell the listeners a little more about that?
Shawna Scafe 09:25 Yeah, we started something called Thanksgiving journal. And we started it nine years ago. So it's a book that we pass around at Thanksgiving dinner and everybody takes a turn to write in the book, what they're thankful for. And the book has just become kind of this time capsule. Over the past nine years, we've had Thanksgiving at different homes and in different places with different people and to see and look back on all the friends and family, the kids, people who are not in our lives anymore, to see what they've written over the years and to see how it's changed and grown over the years. It's just like looking through a bit of history about everything that we've been through and all of the special people in our lives. It's really, really cool.
Andrea Heyman 10:09 So it sounds like you take it, wherever you're going to be for Thanksgiving and whoever you're with is involved in that journal writing.
Shawna Scafe 10:17 Yeah, like, it's my in laws. It's my sister's in laws. It's our friends, it's my husband's workers, anyone that we've ever shared a Thanksgiving meal with, whether it's friends giving or a family, Thanksgiving, it's all in there.
Andrea Heyman 10:31 And how often do you read back through it?
Shawna Scafe 10:33 Sometimes I pull it off the shelf throughout the year. But always when it's Thanksgiving, we pull it down, we start reading back through it. And it's really cool, because the kids will love to hear what they said they were thankful for over the years. And like, there's a theme in each year that you can see with the kids. So it's kind of it's kind of a special keepsake as well.
Andrea Heyman 10:54 Absolutely. It sounds like it would be Are there any excerpts in there that are really memorable?
Shawna Scafe 11:01 You know, I would have to go through and flake them. But there's a lot of really cheeky things that the guys like to write in there about, you know, they're all hard working mining men, so they're thankful for metal prices, and just stuff like that are lots of sentiments from the grandmas and lots of, you know, thankful for the kids from the mom. So there are some themes you see on the different life stages of the people who are writing in the book.
Andrea Heyman 11:25 What do you think you'll be writing in there this year? or What did you already write in half?
Shawna Scafe 11:30 Yes. So I tried to get really specific as I write to it, because when you look back, and you don't want to just read the same things over again. So I try to also note kind of what was going on in our life that year, that month. And this past year, I was just really thankful that my husband made some trips across the province, and he got home on time he got home early, he was safe. And you know, the health of our community. covid is a theme this year in the book. So having those specific little things that the kids would think before, you know, they're thankful for their cat and hockey, and their community. So it's kind of a sweet little snapshot of where they're at as well.
Andrea Heyman 12:09 That's fantastic. Well, thank you for joining us and sharing that I'm sure that would be a really great tradition for anyone's family to adapt.
Shawna Scafe 12:20 Yeah, my pleasure. It's just so helpful to write down what you're thankful for, I think it's a really meaningful thing. And to hear everyone read it out during dinner, usually makes you tear up a little bit. But it's a really special practice that I think it's important to show the kids that this is a practice that we want to embrace, and this is the day that we do it.
Andrea Heyman 12:41 Don't you just love that idea. I think it is so incredible. And I love how it's almost like this incredible picture of history and what their lives were like at that time. Next, we hear from my friend Heather, who is actually on episode two. And I asked Heather to be back because I really do not know anyone who has more traditions and food related traditions than her. So today, she shares a couple of her family's Thanksgiving traditions. Heather, thank you so much for coming back to the show. Last time you were on you had so much really interesting stories and information to tell us and so I look forward to hearing more from you.
Heather C 13:27 Thank you.
Andrea Heyman 13:29 So as someone who has a lot of traditions and traditions related to food, tell us if you have any Thanksgiving traditions.
Heather C 13:41 So when I was a little girl, we always went to my aunt tunes. And she used to have so many people extended to aunts, uncles, cousins, kids running around, and always always a huge crowd. So the first thing actually, I don't think about the food. I actually think about the huge crowd, and how much fun every Thanksgiving really was when I was a kid. And then eventually it got to be too much for anshun and my mom took over Thanksgiving. So she's been doing that for several years. In fact, I've been with my husband 24 years, something like that. And he's only been in my mother's house and my kids have only been in my mother's house so they have their own Thanksgiving traditions. We always serve the same food is always a big Turkey and gravy, mashed potato and sweet potato. And we have these small little famous potatoes that my mom makes. They're like little Munchkin potatoes. They're so good. We always have a pumpkin pie for the people who want pumpkin pie but my family every year, we make two banana cream pies from scratch.
Andrea Heyman 14:43 And how to add banana cream pie has come to be the tradition.
Heather C 14:48 It's an old family recipe and it's been passed around and no one in my family really loves pumpkin. So we always had to come up with an alternative dessert and The other dessert we always make are these cookies with the green nuts. So we always have cookies with the green. That's banana cream pie. And then pumpkin pie for the people who marry and who may be like it.
Andrea Heyman 15:11 And is there a story behind the cookies with the green nuts?
Heather C 15:14 Yes, I actually went back to my mom to make sure that I had the facts correct. But when my grandmother's sister went on vacation with her two small girls, they stayed. I think it's some kind of bed and breakfast or some kind of hotel where they serve these cookies with the green nuts. And the girls loved them. These are my mom's cousins. And so she asked the woman for the recipe, and the woman reluctantly gave it to her and left a few ingredients out. So my aunt Francis actually kind of manipulated the recipe until she got it right. And so now it's been this family tradition to make these cookies with the green that's for pretty much every holiday, especially Thanksgiving.
Andrea Heyman 15:55 And what actually are the green nuts?
Heather C 15:57 They're actually just colored nuts. A little bit of green. Yeah, there'snothing really flashy. Oh, is that is what you would think. But no, it's more like a crunchy little toffee cookie. And then the little toppings on top are green.
Andrea Heyman 16:13 Sounds like you have another positive feelings around Thanksgiving.
Heather C 16:19 Yes. Always a big crowd. always a lot of fun. Always non religious. So that's really nice. And yeah.
Andrea Heyman 16:29 So you can really hear how much Heather loves Thanksgiving and how much that big gathering for her means to her and her family. Finally, I have anna and i have been blessed to have Anna come into my life through networking. And she actually was the person who gave me the idea to create this episode. So Anna grew up in Puerto Rico, and she had Thanksgiving, definitely. But her food recipes were slightly different because they incorporated a Latino flair into it with the seasonings and stuff like that. And now she lives in London, and she still celebrates Thanksgiving. And she's kind of known amongst her friends there for continuing the Thanksgiving celebration. Anna, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the show today. I'm so glad you could join us.
Anna Orenstein 17:30 Thank you so much for having me.
Andrea Heyman 17:32 So tell the listeners where you grew up and how the Thanksgiving traditions were slightly different there.
Anna Orenstein 17:40 Absolutely. So I grew up in gwy novel, which is in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, that is part of the United States. We're a Commonwealth. And I grew up there. And so I spent my childhood there before going to study in the US and then ending up in Europe for 20 years.
Andrea Heyman 17:58 And how were the Thanksgiving traditions? Any different they're growing up?
Anna Orenstein 18:03 Oh, sure. So basically Thanksgiving kind of marks the start of Christmas for us and Puerto Rico. And so since Puerto Rico is part of the US By the way, we celebrate all the American traditions, the Fourth of July, you know everything the same Labor Day. And so Thanksgiving has its similarities in terms of families gathered together. It's a big food and family day, but our our food varies a little bit. So for instance, we have Turkey, but the way we season it has to do a lot with are the seasons available in our country. So for example, our turkey is called Bible Chone Bible means turkey in Spanish and Shawn is like a diminutive of legend which is like a roasted pig. And so the seasonings we use for it are oregano and garlic and cilantro and what I was showing you the adorable and the ochota to give it that lovely kind of reddish brown color and olive oil and we really season the turkey inside out to get an absorb those lovely lovely Latina flavors. So that's one big difference. The other thing is for instance, instead of pumpkin pie a lot of people make pumpkin Flan and I love myself doing that I do it every year and it's super easy. You know you just need it like evaporated milk. You need condensed milk vanilla and then a can of pumpkin pie. I sometimes mix it with fresh pumpkin just so it has a little bit more kind of taste to it. But a Flan is delicious at Thanksgiving and then lastly instead of let's say like an eggnog, we have cookie dough and that is a coconut based delicious kind of high calorie but delicious drink that we have a Thanksgiving and Christmas because again Thanksgiving is our beginning to Christmas in our country.
Andrea Heyman 20:01 I never would have thought of pumpkin flan. But that is absolutely incredible.
Anna Orenstein 20:08 I mean, so the food traditions were slightly different. You kind of had your local take of it.
Andrea Heyman 20:15 Were there any other traditions that you had growing up? related to Thanksgiving?
Anna Orenstein 20:22 Oh, okay, so what what's interesting that say about me growing up, I grew up in a multicultural and multi religious family. So I am half Catholic and half Jewish from the religion side and Ben from the cultural side. So my father's first generation American, and my mother's Puerto Rican. So we again, we had that just mixture of celebrations throughout the year celebrating both Jewish traditions, Christian traditions, and as well as kind of cultural traditions. Yeah, so it's really, really fun.
Andrea Heyman 20:53 So you are a classic melting pot.
Anna Orenstein 20:55 I am indeed a melting pot, pot or my as they say,
Andrea Heyman 21:00 Yeah, right, exactly. And do you still celebrate Thanksgiving now that you live in London?
Anna Orenstein 21:07 Yes, absolutely. I'm kind of known amongst my friends here in London. I've always cooking and you know, for Thanksgiving here, for instance. And what's funny is with so many different friends from all over, and different religious backgrounds to I have to, for instance, sometimes with the turkey, I would put bacon on it. And so I have to be mindful of, for example, some of my friends that don't, you know, don't eat bacon. And so I do kind of a vegetarian option, which usually is a melanzane parmigiana. And I do the turkey in the Puerto Rican style public shown. And then I will do a roasted ham as well, because I can have, you know, 20 people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner, although this year we're in lockdown. So it's just my new hubby.
Andrea Heyman 21:51 And I and will you have it on Thursday? Or will you do the celebration a different day of the week?
Anna Orenstein 21:58 I usually take the day off work and I mean from the evening before so like the flan. I'll make it the day before just for ease and for oven space. And also it just gets that extra flavor. And then I spend the whole day I wake up super early and I have a little cookie dough, which I add a little rum and I know you shouldn't be drinking in the morning, but it just adds that extra Thanksgiving Christmassy feel.
Andrea Heyman 22:21 It makes it just feel like thanksgiving to you.
Anna Orenstein 22:24 Yes, yes. And I love decorating the table and having those beautiful fall colors as decorations as well.
Andrea Heyman 22:32 Oh, Anna, that sounds fantastic. Thank you for sharing these with us. So thanks for joining me for this episode. If you want to delve into this conversation a little bit deeper, you can find many of my friends and listeners over at my facebook group page. It's called adventures and feeding my fam and it's just a safe spot where we're kind of going deeper into the conversations and sharing ideas. I really appreciate all the listeners and if you enjoyed this episode, please rate the podcast and also leave a review. I would love to share with other people so if you're willing to you can tag a friend or share this podcast with a friend that you know would enjoy it as much as you do. Until the next episode. Take care