Thanksgiving

We never have a turkey at a Luu-style Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, we get together to prepare traditional Vietnamese food. This year, we had:

1. Vietnamese crepe stuffed with sliced pork, shrimp, enoki mushrooms, and bean sprouts, eaten with fresh greens including butterleaf lettuce, mint, cilantro, and baby Chinese mustard leaf.
2. Oven-roasted chicken.
3. Vinegar-poached, deli-sliced beef and calamari with vermicelli rolled in rice paper.
   
   Mmm, now that's the stuff. Ah, the chopsticks. Where the heck would we be without chopsticks??
   
   Preparing food: a tradition often passed along from mothers to daughters, special recipes and secret tips and tricks for making it come out "just right." The smell of warm food wafting from the kitchen, the sound of shrimp sizzling in a pan's hot oil, the sight of steam lifted from the bubbling pots to the overhead fan--these are the things I associate with home, and comfort.
   
   Here's my mom serving up some crepe:
   
   
   
   

Got nuoc mam? Shown here with pickled leeks. Because no Vietnamese house is complete without it.

I am grown now. I spend more time away from home--at work, with my boyfriend, juggling a social life and a career as I unfurl my wings in the corporate world and seek to soar. But when I am in my mother's kitchen, spending time plucking greens for our dinner, mixing sauce, seeking cooking advice for a particular dish, and sharing gossip and laughs with her for a rare day completely in her company, I am my mother's little girl again.