Asian American Thanksgivings 2011

 Over the past couple years, Thanksgiving at the two households have become quite the multi-day affair. This year it took up 3 delicious days to celebrate with my in-laws and my family. Feast your eyes upon my 3 dinners!

 Day 1 with the in-laws consisted of the traditional American fare. Perfectly marinated turkey, pesto/garlic green beans and broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes, Trader Joe's crescent rolls, corn, gravy, ham, and THE BEST STUFFING EVER! I'm lucky to be having leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

A whole juicy turkey thigh for me.

Can't forget the condiments of green onions, pineapples for the ham, and cranberry sauce for the turkey. Cranberry sauce on turkey, you either love it or hate it and I love it. I prefer cranberry sauce from scratch but the can is also a good substitute. We had fancy looking grape cider flutes which reminded me alot of Welch's grape juice.

Day 2 with the in-laws was a bit more interactive. We all gathered in the kitchen to make chive dumplings. Some were made by hand and some were made using the dumpling press, aka the CLAMP!

 (photo courtesy of google) Phil likes to buy silly kitchen gadgets randomly when he thinks any home cook would find them to be amazing time savers. A couple years ago, he tossed a dumpling press into my birthday gift package. I guffawed at the triviality of a dumpling press but let me tell you, this day when we opened it and used it for the first time, I have to admit that it's pretty cool.

As a group, we made about 300 dumplings all together. Good work everyone! Phil's cousin insists we call him The Clamp. Well, that's one M away from a dreadful STD but that's he wants to be called...

Chive dumplings and yellow egg noodles with apple cider in the back ground.

Chive dumplings with white banh pho style noodles. Along with the chives, the insides contain marinated pork and shrimp.  These were delicious and I also got to take leftovers home to last me the whole week. Woop woop! 

Day 3 - a Vietnamese affair. One of the most popular entries on this blog is last year's Vietnamese Thanksgiving post. I cannot figure out why but I'm hoping this year's post is just as popular because the food was equally good and exotic. My family made spring rolls using the new griddle we purchased during Black Friday for $20.

I brought a side of cucumber salad to use up my leftover Persian cucumbers at home. 

Fresh shrimp, squid, and beef were prepared with chopped red onion and green scallions.

My brother bought this nifty spring roll wrapper holder/dipper contraption. The clip on the side holds your dry wrappers in place while the semi-circular container holds warm water.

When you're ready, you dip your wrapper in the water and spin it in a circle for full coverage. 

Interactive eating. This reminds me of Korean BBQ restaurants. Everyone tosses their seafood, beef, mushroom, and onions of choice onto a well buttered griddle surface. As the items finish cooking, each person prepares their own dipped spring roll wrapper with lettuce, vermicelli, herbs, and cucumber. When everything's done cooking, protein is added and wrapped up. We ate it with a very authentic and smelly Vietnamese fish dipping sauce (mam nem) and Phil had a safer, less smelly but still smelly, fish sauce to dip. Sorry no pictures of the spring rolls because my hands were sticky and smelly and I didn't want to dirty the camera. Trust me, it was good!

I'm really enjoying my holidays now because one holiday has multiple days of multi-cultural meals. American, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Happy Thanksgiving! What did you guys eat for Thanksgiving?