Rajeev's World: I Don't Want Nirvana! I Want Great Food, Always! -- Part XIV

Saturday, November 28, 2015

I Don't Want Nirvana! I Want Great Food, Always! -- Part XIV - An Evening Of Thanksgiving...

We're soon going to be completing 3 months in Songdo - these 3 months have been extremely trying but enriching at the same time.

Most of the times, we have been pleasantly surprised by what lay ahead of us, just around the corner. And we have got to interact with people from all around the world - in a sense Songdo is a microcosm of the "shrinking world".

And then we were invited by our Peruvian-American friend to join him in celebrating the American festival of Thanksgiving. And we enthusiastically agreed - not only would we get accustomed to the festivities in the United States, but this would, in a sense, be our thanksgiving to Songdo, for not only surviving here but also for the intangible enriching experiences that we got here, in Korea, in the last 3 months...

My first introduction to the Thanksgiving celebrations happened as a kid - I was always a history buff. And I had a soft spot for American history - the migration from Europe to the New World, the American War of Independence, the Civil War leading up to modern United States. One of the books that my parents bought for me from a local bookshop was on the early settlers in New England - a Ladybird book called The Pilgrim's Progress!

The book explained the challenges the settlers faced in New England in the 1600s, described how they overcame the challenges and how they celebrated the their first harvest in the new land with a feast, shared with a local tribe - the Wampanoags.

In short, the story goes as follows: English separatists or the Pilgrims, as they were called, who arrived at Plymouth Rock onboard the ship, Mayflower. The settlers did not have enough food to survive. The native Wampanoag tribe helped them adapt to the new environment and get settled. They gave the Pilgrims seeds and taught them how to fish. And after a particularly good harvest, the Pilgrims had a three-day feast, which they shared with the Wampanoag people. It is believed that the food served at this feast was all local produce - turkey with stuffing, seafood and fall vegetables like corn and squash. This was the origin of the modern Thanksgiving feast, which was formalised by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War.

Today, Thanksgiving is one of the biggest festivals in the United States, commemorating the fall harvest and kicking off the holiday season with a feast to acknowledge our gratitude for bounties of nature that all Americans can enjoy.

The bounties of fall with mandarins from Jeju...