I organized a storytelling event at our local community center, 19 Carter, over the last Thanksgiving weekend. I was one of the storytellers, and the theme of the day was “Family and Holiday”. My story was about the first time me and my family had a Christmas Turkey dinner in the early 1980s.
I wasn’t going to post it because the audio of the recording wasn’t good. But it’s the Lunar New Year and I’m really missing my family. So I decided to post it anyway.
Since the audio is not good, I’m posting the written version here:
The year was 1981. I was 10 years old. My siblings and I were home, snuggling on the sofa, flipping through “TV Times” to see what movie we should watch later that night. But we were actually not reading anything at all, as there was one thing and one thing only on my minds – what’s for dinner. Our dinner that night was going to be epic – our parents were on their way to bring home our very first turkey dinner for Christmas!
It was the early ‘80s and Hong Kong was still under British rule. I grew up watching people celebrate Christmas with turkey dinners on British TV and movies. But up until that point, it wasn’t easy to get a roast turkey for Christmas, unless you went to a fancy restaurant.
Our family had always celebrated Christmas in our home. But before that night, Christmas dinner meant various Chinese dishes of chicken, seafood, and vegetables. With rice, of course. But Christmas turkeys looked so plump and juicy on TV! And the skin looked so crispy that it would put my favorite Chinese roast goose to shame.
That year, a big restaurant chain in Hong Kong announced they would offer an “authentic, traditional Christmas dinner”, complete with roast turkey, sides, and dessert.
Every time I saw that commercial, I would ask my parents gingerly if we could maybe order it for Christmas.
You see, I came from a humble family. My dad worked very hard to support our family of five, and my mom stayed home to take care of everything else. There was always plenty of food on the table. But I also knew we need to be very sensible about spending and not splurging on frivolous things. At 10 years old, I was old enough to understand that the family Christmas dinner package was more than what we would typically spend for dinner. I didn’t think my parents would get it and I didn’t want to push too hard. But it doesn’t hurt to ask!
As luck would have it, my dad received a year-end bonus and decided to celebrate it with a nice Christmas dinner! I was ecstatic! I started counting down the days since he placed that order. And finally, it’s Christmas day and we were about to devour the legendary bird!
It’s six o’clock and my parents finally got home with our Christmas dinner! My siblings and I had already set the table and we were ready to eat!
I don’t remember what was exactly included in the dinner package, but I will never forget about the turkey and the Christmas pudding.
I remember the turkey being even bigger than I imagined. We were all wooing and ahhing as my dad opened the package. He started carving the bird and each of us got a big piece of turkey.
We started digging in. To my disappointment, the turkey was, eh, underwhelming, to say the least. And from the looks on my family’s faces, I think everyone agreed. It was not bad, but a bit overcooked. The skin was not crispy, but soft and kind of chewy from the steam it was trapped in during the half-hour journey home. In other words, it was meh.
But we were good kids and we didn’t want to ruin Christmas. So we politely finished the piece of turkey on our plates. But no one got seconds.
I was still hopeful. We still had the Christmas pudding. It was a dark brown, sticky mess smelling of citrus, sugar, and spices. It looked and smelled promising. We divided the pudding into 5 equal portions and we each took one.
As I bit into the pudding, a shiver went right down my spine – and it was not the good kind. The pudding was way too sweet! Our family loves a good dessert. But it has to be “not too sweet”. And the Christmas pudding was off-the-chart sweet! We didn’t want to waste food. So I suggested adding milk to the pudding and we ate it like a porridge.
After dinner, we still had more than half of a turkey left. We couldn’t just throw it away, could we? Luckily for us, my mom’s a wizard in the kitchen, she managed to use all the leftovers in different ways over the next few days: the carcass and some of the meat to make congee for breakfast, turkey sandwiches, fried rice with turkey, and, my favorite, a turkey stew with Chinese turnips.
I don’t think I’ve had turkey again until I moved to the U.S. And now that I’m here in America, and married to a wonderful chef, I know turkey can taste pretty good. Every time I have roast turkey at Thanksgiving, I think back on that very first turkey dinner with my family and how a bad dinner can still be full of love and fond memories.
Carmen Suen Writes 