remembering and moving on

Remembering:
It's Thanksgiving... And so, just for a moment let's debunk American mythology about Thanksgiving's origins. According to an article written by Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro (found in Z magazine's November print edition), the first Thanksgiving Day was recorded in Massachusetts in 1637. The event that led to Thanksgiving Day was not, as our history teachers would lead us to believe, the Pilgrims and Indians in Plymouth working together to survive a difficult winter, but in fact a celebration of a massacre of more than 700 Pequot men, women and children in what is now Mystic, Connecticut. The Massachusetts Bay Colonists surely faced very difficult circumstances in their first years in the "new world," but their survival was not borne out friendliness with natives, instead it was ensured by the numerous raids and massacres of American Indians that enabled the colonists to loot and pillage native communities for food and other supplies.

In 1970, the American Indian Movement declared Thanksgiving Day as a Day of Mourning for Indians throughout the Americas, and asks people to remember that our country has been built on the backs of Native Americans, who have been cheated, massacred, and lied to since before our county's inception. So before you take a big bite out of that juicy tofu turkey, remember to remember the people who were here first, and ask for their forgiveness while you are at it.

And Moving On:
Yes, I am in Korea. Yes, I am actually celebrating Thanksgiving. Does it sound like hypocrisy because of what I just wrote? Well, too bad. You see, I think that the idea of Thanksgiving is actually a really good one. People of different cultures all over the world celebrate some sort of Thanksgiving and I think it is important to take a special day to feel grateful for everything that we have. But we should remember how we got here, and so while we celebrate, we should do it with a little bit of a heavy heart for all the mistakes we made along the way.

and really really moving on:
How do you cook a Thanksgiving Feast with no oven??!! Tonight I am making a dinner for a handful of friends, but well, Koreans don't use ovens. They hardly exist at all in this country. I don't even know someone who knows someone who has an oven. For real though.

So my menu, you ask? I have no freakin' idea, but I'd better get to work because it's 11am and I haven't even started shopping! I have something that kind of looks like a broiler (I've only used it to bake sweet potatoes) and a ghetto toaster oven that seems like it is going to explode after two pieces of bread, but I think I'm going to try and cook Salmon. It seems risky, especially because that particular fish costs about as much a plastic surgery in Korea, but I think I might be able to pull it off.

Here's a list of the food you can't find in Korea (usually) and so will not be on my menu:
Green Beans
Cheese (except for [Philadelphia] cream cheese and American)
cilantro (who needs that on Thanksgiving?!)
vanilla extract (baked goods are doubly out)
Turkey
Cranberries
cornbread stuff

I will have none of my Thanksgiving staples, except for sweet potatoes, which are in abundance here. What I really want is green beans and pecan pie. An impossibility.

So now I'm off to:
buy some food (where and what I have no idea)
finish cleaning my house so my friends aren't disgusted
edit an mtu paper
take a shower
and
finally hopefully cook something that is edible

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. If anyone wants to FedEX me some pecan pie, I won't complain one bit.