By ShareAmerica
For Jeneba Ghatt, jollof rice, a traditional dish from Sierra Leone, is such a big part of her family’s Thanksgiving that the holiday tradition isn’t the same without it.
When Ghatt’s mother was ill last year and unable to cook the rice dish prepared with tomato sauce and served under a stew of beef, chicken or fish, the holiday felt incomplete.
It was like “we failed at Thanksgiving because there was no jollof rice,” says Ghatt, who came to the United States from Sierra Leone as a young child and now lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.
Ghatt has now learned to cook jollof rice and will serve the dish alongside a Thanksgiving turkey when her husband, children and three siblings celebrate this year. “It’s home, it’s comfort, it’s family,” she said, describing jollof rice’s place on her Thanksgiving table.
Ghatt is one of many Americans who incorporate recipes from their ancestral homes into Thanksgiving. Some Chinese American families add sticky rice stuffing to their Thanksgiving meal, while some Mexican Americans serve up tamales.
Nataliya Mikhnova brings Ukrainian borsch, a beet soup, to Thanksgiving meals. Her family received two invites last year to their first Thanksgiving after settling in the United States following Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Mikhnova says she loves the mix of cultures that was a part of her first Thanksgiving in a new country. Her family arrived in Ukrainian dress and learned how to cook traditional Thanksgiving dishes.
“It’s a warm family holiday,” Mikhnova said. “This celebration is appropriate for us now because we have so many things to be thankful for. We are in safety.”
Rosemarie DeLuca’s Italian heritage has long been at the center of her family’s Thanksgiving meals. Her father refused poultry after eating raw chicken while stationed overseas with the Army in the 1950s, so the family’s “turkey day” became synonymous with homemade lasagna.
Cooking from memory a recipe from the family’s ancestral home in Naples, Italy, DeLuca’s grandmother piled on luscious layers of cheese and pasta for lasagna served with sausage links and meatballs steeped in a homemade sauce.
DeLuca’s mother eventually learned the recipe. Yet DeLuca says because of gluten sensitivities in the family, lasagna is now reserved for those big Thanksgiving celebrations when her siblings visit. But growing up DeLuca never missed the turkey dinners other families ate on Thanksgiving. “We thought ‘we are the cool ones’,” she said. “We’re Italian. We eat pasta.”
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Previously Published on share.america.gov
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