General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Oberlin College's Food and Cultural Appropriation [View all]Skinner
(63,645 posts)Right after college two friends and I spent some time backpacking in Asia, and we happened to be in Sumatra, Indonesia, on Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving we were eating in a little restaurant at one of the touristy areas that catered mostly to western tourists, and we ran into some other Americans, and someone mentioned that the next day was Thanksgiving and we should all get together and have a Thanksgiving dinner together. I think there were nine of us altogether. So we talked to the manager of the restaurant and explained that the next day was an important American holiday and we explained a number of traditional Thanksgiving foods, and would they be interested in making us a big celebratory feast?
Long story short, it was the best Thanksgiving meal of my life. None of it was exactly what you would get in the US. It was all Indonesian interpretations of American foods, made with whatever ingredients were available. (And this was pre-Internet, so they couldn't go on the internet and get the "real" recipes.) It was delicious and familiar but also totally unique. We had chickens instead of turkey. We had some kind of mashed tuber or taro instead of mashed potatoes. There was an attempt at stuffing that was barely recognizable as stuffing, but delicious. There were probably a dozen different dishes, some similar to American dishes and others straight-up Indonesian. It was fantastic.