Rachel Izuagbe said her mom is going to attempt to make stuffing for the first time this Thanksgiving holiday, in addition to serving more traditional dishes.
The Izuagbe family is from Nigeria, but Rachel and her sisters were born and raised in Lacey, Washington. For Thanksgiving holidays, they also eat Nigerian jollof rice, a tomato-based dish that is stirred on the stove first then baked in the oven and served with dodo, or fried plantains; as well as Egusi soup, a savory soup made from ground melon seeds, meat, seafood and vegetables. They recently started to incorporate American foods.
“What’s on TV is not what it’s like on our kitchen table,” Izuagbe said. Her family also serves okro soup, a thick soup made of either meat or seafood with Nigerian spices.
This year, Izuagbe said, she wants to try to make meat pies for her family since she’s been practicing. The dough is filled with turkey, ground beef, carrots and potatoes, but instead of frying them as is traditional, her family bakes the pies.
While some of these dishes are served weekly, like jollof rice, Izuagbe is looking forward to some special holiday treats like suya – Nigerian beef kebabs seasoned with peanut butter and roasted in the oven. She also can’t wait to dig into akara, fried fritters filled with bell peppers or habanero peppers and coated with blended black-eyed peas. They’re savory and crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside.
Along with Nigerian dishes on their holiday table, they still serve turkey, mashed potatoes, bacon onion crisps and cheesy scalloped potatoes. And although it isn’t Nigerian food, they also always have Chinese stir-fried vegetables and noodles since they all love them.
Rachel Izuagbe, a Nigerian-American in Lacey, said her family’s Thanksgiving last year included coconut rice, moi moi (wrapped in foil, top left), pounded yam (wrapped in plastic), mac and cheese, shrimp, chicken wings, collard greens, noodles, mashed potatoes with bacon, onion crisps and cheese, Nigerian fish dishes, salmon, Egusi soup, stew, orange chicken, liver, Nigerian fried rice and broccoli. (Photo courtesy of Rachel Izuagbe)
Holiday music at the Izuagbe household may also be a bit different from those families who consider Thanksgiving the unofficial start of Christmas-music season. Her parents always have Afrobeat playing at any family gathering.
“It doesn’t matter what event it is, if we’re hosting something, they’re [her parents] playing music and my mom’s like, ‘Oh, come and dance!’” Izuagbe said. She and her sisters also love the musical Hamilton, so they play the songs and each of them picks a part and sings.
A Chinese Thanksgiving
Chloe Fong is a computer science and engineering master’s student at the University of Washington. and for holidays – and every day – her family mostly serves cuisine from south China and Hong Kong, where her mother and most of her family grew up.
Fong, who grew up in Bellevue, said Thanksgiving is “always just the time to get together with family and eat some really hearty, home-cooked food and also a time to be grateful for all that we have.”
Before the pandemic, Fong said they would have a house full of up to 40 family members, plus some friends. Their holiday spreads include a combination of Chinese and East Asian foods as well as basic American Thanksgiving fare. Now, although her family has downsized to celebrate only with immediate family members, they still include both Chinese and American cuisine.
“So of course, we’d always have turkey, ham, someone would bring mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes and then the Asian dishes would usually include some noodles,” Fong said. “There’s much less variety in the American versus Chinese food per category of dishes.”
They always serve chow mein noodles, char siu (Cantonese-style barbecued pork) and roasted duck. Fong is looking forward to eating her mom’s gai lan, or Chinese stir fry, which includes vegetables fried in a wok so it has a “breath of fire” along with oyster sauce, which gives the dish a sweet undertone.
Roast duck hangs in the window of King’s Barbecue House in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. While some prefer to stick with traditional Thanksgiving dishes, others include foods from other places in their holiday meals. (M. Scott Brauer/Cascade PBS)
Fong said they’re American-leaning in the desserts arena, serving pumpkin pie, but they will also have Chinese desserts like egg tart.
She said her family has always seen Thanksgiving as a Western holiday by default since it is American.
“We put our own Chinese cultural twist on it by introducing our foods,” Fong said.
Chloe Fong, a Chinese American in Seattle, had a 2023 Thanksgiving meal with family including both Cantonese and American dishes. Between the sliced ham and turkey is a dish of mushrooms and gailan, or Chinese broccoli (second from top) and braised pigs’ feet with soft-boiled eggs (right, in black rectangle dish). Next to the mashed potatoes and gravy are dishes of stir-fried shrimp and pieces of roast duck (center). There was also marshmallow-covered mashed yams (top left) and rice (not shown). “We always have rice,” Fong said. (Photo courtesy of Chloe Fong)
A Korean Thanksgiving
Jane Hong said growing up in Federal Way she wished her family had had what she considered a “traditional American Thanksgiving,” including turkey and mashed potatoes.
“We didn’t really think of it as that big of a holiday, it was more of a time to rest and spend with family,” Hong said.
Instead of a turkey, her parents, who came from Korea, serve galbi, Korean barbecued ribs or fried chicken, alongside banchan, or Korean vegetable side dishes like kimchi. Her family also serves japchae (sweet and savory stir-fried glass noodles) and vegetables.
Hong said her family’s table always includes white rice and pa jun, savory Korean vegetable pancakes with scallions.
Since she and her cousins are first-generation Korean Americans, they have begun bringing more American foods like mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, apple crisps and other desserts to the family Thanksgiving celebration.
“As we’ve gotten older, we want to incorporate different dishes, so now I’m grateful to experience both,” Hong said.
She and her family also went to an American church in Federal Way, which was very diverse. She was able to sample American foods through participating in church gatherings and in her young adult group.
She remembers eating turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce for the first time at one of those gatherings. Green bean casserole was also a favorite at those church events.
“Throughout the year, we don’t make mashed potatoes or gravy, so this time of the year is the only time we’d have it,” Hong said.
For this year, she’s going to try to make zucchini sweet potato corn bread for her family and hopes to play board games with her cousins.
Jane Hong, a Korean American born and raised in Federal Way, shows her family’s 2023 Thanksgiving spread, which included Korean-style beef short ribs called galbi (center in slow cooker), kimchi and other Korean side dishes, and also American dishes like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and roasted sweet potatoes. (Photo courtesy of Jane Hong)
A Somali holiday
Marian Mohamed and her family thought Thanksgiving was a Christian holiday, so when they first came to this country they didn’t think they were allowed to celebrate it because they are Muslim.
Mohamed’s family immigrated from Somalia. She grew up in Rainier Beach and went to high school in Kent.
She remembers during school other students would ask how her family celebrated the holiday, and she would always say that they didn’t celebrate it and that the only thing they would be doing during the break would be watching TV.
When she was 15 or 16, one person in her family did more research and discovered Thanksgiving wasn’t a Christian holiday and that it was mostly about being with family and celebrating with each other.
She said it was one of the ways her younger family members were able to explain to the older family members who immigrated to the United States how they could combine their Somali culture with their new American life. Mohammed said making modifications that would allow her cultures to coexist has been an interesting path toward her family celebrating the holiday.
Mohamed said Thanksgiving in her house looks like a bunch of her younger cousins running around, Somali music blasting throughout the house as some cousins try to figure out if they bought a turkey or a chicken. Her aunties and mom might be on the other side of the kitchen trying to estimate how many more sambusas (Somali-style dumplings with meat, veggie or tuna fillings) or Somali desserts (like mandazi, a kind of fried dough) need to be fried.
Most of the food her family serves for Thanksgiving are dishes usually reserved for Muslim holidays like Ramadan, but they serve them on this American holiday since it’s a time for all of them to get together. Mohammed said she looks forward to enjoying her mom’s Somali cakes and pumpkin pie this week.
“When it’s all spread out on the table, I like how unique it is where it’s a blend of these two cultures. I think that makes it so American,” she said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Marian Mohamed's last name, it has been updated with the correct spelling.
