Turkey and Hominy Soup

This recipe is legend among our family and family friends. Every fall and winter, my mother makes several giant batches to dole out with crusty bread on cold nights. My mother refers to it simply as "Turkey Soup," but in reality it is so stuffed with ingredients it's hardly a soup anymore. The way my mother cooks is to generally clear out her fridge, chucking things in until she thinks it "smells right" so this isn't exactly a recipe that was easy to write down, but it is certainly one that it is tailor-made for alterations.


Don't like hominy? Well I think you're nuts, but feel free to replace them with some kidney beans, or whatever strikes your fancy (or you have in your cupboard).

I happen to love hominy in a big way, it's always been my favorite part of this soup. For those of you not familiar with hominy, it is corn that has been treated with lye making it puffy and delicious in a process called nixtamalization. It is the precursor to masa, the ground corn dough that makes up tortillas, tamales, and papusas. The name "hominy" comes from the Powhatan tribe of American Indians, and many traditional American Indian diets included hominy.

Look how big that can is! IPhone for size comparison.

This recipe is very typical of my mother's cooking, almost spartan in its preparation. No added salt, no added fats, no giant mess of spices. While the stock is made in a French manner, with the classic mirepoux of celery, onion, and carrots, one could see a lot of Japanese American influences even in her Western-style cooking. The mottainai "waste-nothing" attitude behind using the leftover turkey bones to make her own stock and clearing out the cupboards and fridge for a soup that is always changing depending not only on the season but the very day she cooks it, for example.

Modern Choctaw Cornsticks

None of the women in my family are pushovers. They are firebrands, fighters both feisty and ferocious. They are engineers, businesswomen, nurses. Above all: they are, without exception, beautiful and intelligent women who know what they want in life. Naysayers could try and call them headstrong, but no one ever doubts their strength.

It's a big legacy to live up to.

My paternal grandmother is no exception. She's half Choctaw and Caucasian and hails originally from Southeastern Oklahoma in the heart of the Choctaw Nation before moving to New Mexico. Her American Indian mother died when she was young, and when her father remarried she was sent away to Indian boarding school.

A normal little girl would have probably raised less hell, but you probably know where this story was going. I don't have an exact number for the amount of times she ran away from the Goodland Indian Orphanage, but enough that it became obvious she wasn't going to stay at a place if she didn't want to. She was going to carve her own existence the way she viewed it, even as a child.

Thanksgiving

In elementary school, the way we learned about Thanksgiving was that people in loincloths and feathers sat down with people with funny buckle shoes and dowdy hats, and had this awesome feast. They were so buddy-buddy, you wanted to be at that first Thanksgiving table! We all made hats out of construction paper in class and sat down as "Indians" and "Pilgrims."

They didn't teach you until later about the genocide of the American Indians. No teacher told us about the idea of Manifest Destiny causing the death of so many that Holocaust expert David Cesarani stated that more were killed during the white settling of this country than the Holocaust. The Trail of Tears led the Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, and Chickasaw on a death march in the middle of freezing cold and famine.

Nothing was mentioned in elementary school that the first Pilgrims would have not survived their first year here if it weren't for the Wampanoag tribe, and that the Pilgrims later fell to cannibalism to survive. That the graves of the Wampanoag were robbed by the pilgrims, their crops were stolen, and the Wampanoag themselves were sold into slavery wouldn't have made for a good national holiday. Thanksgiving would be an untainted holiday if the schools had left American Indian/Pilgrim "friendship" out altogether. Why it became such a part of the curriculum of public schools still makes no sense to me, and miffs me a bit how sugarcoated history can be.

I love my grandma

I'm part Choctaw. What do I do with this holiday, that glosses over most of the nasty parts of our history yet presents it to little kids as such? Do I shun it, like many American Indians? Do I embrace it, like some do? I'm not Christian nor does my family celebrate this as a religious holiday, so I am certainly not thanking a god with this holiday.

I guess I am truly an adult now, when this sort of soul searching occurs.

I do, and will continue to, celebrate Thanksgiving. You will never find any caricatures of smiley feather-wearing natives decorating our table.  I view it simply as a day of thanks and giving gratitude back for family, friends, and health, which is one holiday that makes sense in every culture. No lavish gifts, no rampant spending and commercialization, just comfort food and the comfort of family.

I was especially thankful that almost everyone was able to make it this year. I wish I could freeze time to when I was a kid and everyone was healthy and younger, but my family and loved ones are getting older and older.

And don't worry, recipes will follow. Right now, it's time to reflect and digest.

Biscuits and Bacon Gravy

I've made tons of sausage gravy (and eaten even more) but when Mr. Mochi came home with a steal: beautiful thick-cut bacon for 40 cents a pound, I knew I wanted to try bacon gravy. Bacon gravy is made the same way as sausage gravy, with a few quirks.

Now, this recipe is just made for serving over piping hot biscuits! Unfortunately, my oven decided to die on me, so I was not able to make any fresh biscuits. I don't know whats wrong, but the oven just won't heat up, and my biscuits just sat there as I fiddled for over an hour with the dial, turning it on and off and waiting 10, then 20 minutes to see if the oven would ever heat up. Hurray for cheap apartment living?

Putting aside my oven's betrayal, let's focus on those quirks. The bacon will take longer to cook than the sausage, because you want it nice and crisp to stand up to the gravy. It will also release quite a bit more fat, so you either have to use less bacon, or drain away some of the fat.  It is also less seasoned than sausage, so you will add more pepper, but less salt since the bacon is cured.

Bacon Corn Chowder

This recipe has no exotic Japanese American ingredients. It's all American. As I've said in my Southern biscuits and gravy post, I am heavily influenced by the way the women who raised me cooked, which was my Japanese American grandmother and mother. However, I do switch it up and cook Southern, New Mexican, and American Indian once in a while.

While traditional American Indian food is for another post, it is funny to think about the American Indian influences on modern cuisine today.  Already pish-poshing?  How you liking your popcorn at the movies?  Corn cultivation and domestication is all thanks to the indigenous people of the Americas. We tend to forget when we sit down to beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry, and turkey every year, but American Indian influences go beyond Thanksgiving.

And let's not forget the potato, which may seem like an old European staple, was brought back from the Americas by the Spanish.

In fact, according to What's Cooking America, the first chowders in America were eaten by American Indians. However, you cannot necessarily say that they introduced Europeans to chowder, because chowders are in every culture.

Bacon and pigs, however, was introduced to the Americas, and made it a better place. hehe!

Oklahoma Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Since I grew up with my mother's cooking, as well as my grandmother from her side, I am definitely more influenced by my Japanese roots when it comes to cooking. However, my father could be called a comfort food connoisseur, and it is funny to realize that some of his favorite foods have roots in his heritage.  Introduced to me at an early age, biscuits and gravy definitely harken to his Oklahoma heritage, where a majority of the Choctaw Tribe (our tribe) was relocated to.

I definitely won't say that this is my healthiest recipe on here, but it is delicious! Plus, I think Southern food gets a bad rap-- this has less calories than stuffed french toast (over 400 per serving, per Mimi's), and more protein. Per livestrong.com, one biscuit with 2tbs. of gravy is only around 256 calories.  Plus, if its homemade gravy, you will drastically cut down the salt. Okay okay, this may just be me rationalizing my favorite "bad" food. BUT ITS SO GOOD!