Thanksgiving in America has this kind of weird tradition where we always eat Turkey. You know the time is coming because turkey starts appearing at the grocery store for a relatively cheap price.

Growing up as a second generation American (I know definitions of this are wonky, but basically I was born here but my parents immigrated from Vietnam), as far as I can remember we always had turkey on the table during Thanksgiving.

Growing up, my parents always cooked Vietnamese food as well as a mix of western food such as hamburgers, casseroles, etc. Oddly enough I went through this phase probably when I was 10-15 that I didn’t quite enjoy Vietnamese food. I remember a particular experience where my parents bought me a McDonalds hamburger and I brought it into a phở restaurant to eat there. The rest of my family was eating phở while I was eating the hamburger. Reflecting back, my parents probably were super frustrated, but obliged with my odd food habits at the time. Long story short, I love Vietnamese food now.

Every Thanksgiving my parents would often cook turkey and some main Vietnamese dish such as Bún Bò Huế. I kind of realized in the past couple of years that I enjoyed the Vietnamese main dishes much more than the turkey. When thinking about it more, I don’t really like turkey generally speaking.

Turkey to me is kind of like a chicken which is hard to cook and kind of gamey. I know people create contrasting sauces like cranberry sauce (please don’t get me started on this) or a chutney. I mean it is okay, but really not my cup of tea.

Secretly I had this plan in my head, where I would tell my mom, that “maybe we can just skip the turkey this year.” This year, my mom suggested just having cornish game hen instead.

With that for the first time ever, turkey didn’t make an appearance at the Thanksgiving table and I am completely a-ok with that.