http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/opinion/thanksgiving-with-or-without-turkey.html
FOUR centuries after the pilgrims, families are still celebrating their successful arrival on North American shores with a big meal at the end of November. But the big roasted turkey doesn’t always have the starring role.
In the family of Margoth Abrego, a 56-year-old Salvadoran immigrant, the whole bird never makes it to the dinner table. Instead, two turkeys (one cooked in the oven, the other on the stovetop) are picked apart in the kitchen, then stuffed in bread to make a Salvadoran dish called pan con chumpe.
The pan con chumpe is served alongside arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), a traditional Puerto Rican dish. For the Abrego family, Thanksgiving is a celebration of their roots in distant places — and a reminder of the long struggle to keep the family united. For 14 years, Ms. Abrego grew up in El Salvador without her mother, who had left to work in Los Angeles hotels and remarried into a Puerto Rican family.
“My mom can’t talk about her childhood without crying,” said Ms. Abrego’s daughter, Leisy Abrego, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “She’s still trying to make up for all those years she lost with her mother.”
This Thanksgiving, five generations of the Abrego family will be seated together. In an age when America’s borders are harder to cross than ever, not every immigrant family is so fortunate...
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