Thanksgiving Traditions

Doesn't everyone have empanadas for Thanksgiving?

My favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner was always the empanadas.

We had turkey and gravy, although I preferred dousing mine in canned cranberry sauce. There was stuffing made with sausages and sliced white bread. There were the candied yams with an entire bag of mini marshmallows melted on top, and there was always pumpkin pie from Stop and Shop.

But before we sat down, there were the empanadas. Something of an appetizer.

My grandmother would already be preparing them when we arrived at her house. I would climb over her tiny dog, Coco, to get to the kitchen, where she had thawed the sofrito that she had made months before: green peppers, onion, several heads of garlic, and culantro.

Once I got there, she would take out the packet of Goya empanada dough and instruct me to roll out each one until it was “just big enough.” I called her years later to get the recipe, and it included many instructions like that.

In went the ground beef, cooked with the sofrito and tons of onions, as well as a few slices of green olives, which I always said I hated, but my grandmother left in because she knew I couldn’t see them inside the dark pastry pocket once cooked.

Then she would slice up the cotija, a salty Mexican cheese, which she liked best in her empanadas because it didn’t melt like mozzarella. “That’s the kind of cheese you want for your empanadas,” she would say, “they’re not quesadillas.”

After we folded over the empanadas and stamped around the half-moon edges with a fork, she would place them into a frying pan, the canola oil crackling as each one slid off her spatula. Sometimes she would let me flip them, but only when I could see that the golden crust had formed on one side.

To the right of the stove, I stood ready with a plate covered in half a dozen sheets of paper towels. I would bring it towards the stove, and she would use her plastic spatula to scoop them out of the pan and place them onto the plate, the paper towels soaking up all the excess oil, the smell bringing everyone into the kitchen.

Only once all the empanadas had been fried would my grandmother dole out a single strip of paper towel to each person and instruct them to choose their empanada. You had to bite the top corner off to let the steam out. I would break it off with my fingers, blowing on it until it was just cool enough to eat, breathing in the smell as the steam escaped.

My grandmother was right, of course, I never could find the olives.

Happy Thanksgiving.

What I’m Reading

• The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick. This book is fantastic. Four women in suburban DC in the early 1960s join a book club that changes their lives. The book takes place across a single year as they shake up their marriages, their careers, and their friendships. It’s a fantastic laugh-out-loud, heartfelt book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. If you have ever lived in another country or traveled extensively in your 20s and 30s, only to come back to where you started, this book will no doubt strike a chord. Latronico eloquently wrote about things that I have been struggling to articulate for years. It’s a short, but powerful read.

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Until next time,

Laura