Food, feast and fervour
BENGALURU: It’s Thanksgiving today and it’s time to bring out your Thanksgiving trousers, as Joey from F.R.I.E.N.D.S calls them. An important festivity for Americans, it has now become big in India too, with expats here celebrating the day to show gratitude. For Americans, who have made Bengaluru their home, the celebrations are about catching up with friends and getting to know each other.
According to Hazel Kocherla, who is part of the Overseas Women’s Club, most Americans in Bengaluru have travelled back home to be with their family since this occasion holds an important cultural significance. Members who are here, are catching up for lunch to celebrate the day. “What happens typically is that everyone holds a Thanksgiving dinner but we do a lunch,” she says, adding, “So I approached a star hotel and they came up with a menu, which was not really a Thanksgiving one but was good enough, especially since the objective was to get together. It’s a bit of nostalgia having spent time in the United States. I returned to India five years ago.”
One of the most important parts of the Thanksgiving feast is the stuffed turkey and city-based Tucker McGaw has a funny anecdote from his childhood. “I grew up in Hyderabad as an expat in the ‘90s. Back then turkeys weren’t really a thing, so we used to smuggle Butterball turkeys over from abroad in our check-in, throwing them into the freezer once we went back for Thanksgiving. Imagine the surprise of the security when they saw the skeleton of a huge bird in their scanner,” laughs McGaw, adding that now they are able to source turkeys to their liking here in India. However, this year McGaw is giving Thanksgiving feast at his home a miss since he is travelling.
Although the Thanksgiving feast has evolved over time, McGaw likes to follow the traditional way. “Even though my family has been living abroad for a long time, we’ve been trying to follow the traditional American Thanksgiving somehow. Obviously, the main attraction of the feast is the turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. And don’t forget the corn!,” explains McGaw, adding that it’s the apple pie that he looks forward to the most.
Even though Thanksgiving is a very American concept, it is not limited to just them. Nowadays, the expat community is diverse and large, which is why caterers are coming up with an exclusive Thanksgiving menu. City-based home chef Susan George has curated one such menu. “A lot of my friends from abroad are enquiring about what to do during Thanksgiving in India. I always reply that there are a lot of options. Even though it’s not a holiday here, many use it as an opportunity to catch up over dinners,” says George.
She has come up with a menu which is called ‘Everything but the Turkey’. “I love turkey but it is not so
popular here. That gives me the chance to explore other things that are part of Thanksgiving like cranberries and pecan. I usually make apple pie but I prepare it with cranberries,” she concludes.
Back in the day
Apart from food, Thanksgiving holds a huge cultural significance. The feast is in honour of the first Thanksgiving in 1621 when the Plymouth colonists/English colonists(Pilgrim) and the Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast. It is also to give thanks to the native Indians for giving colonists the knowledge on how to grow corn. As a result, it is a very important part.