The Bakersfield Voice
Thanksgiving in Vietnam: Pumpkin pies aplenty!
Thanksgiving in Vietnam: Pumpkin pies aplenty!
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Posted by admin Wed Nov 19, 2008 15:15:29 PST
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The pumpkin has never traveled very well. Even in today’s global world it is still unique to North America. I was an agricultural volunteer with International Voluntary Services (IVS), a private form of Peace Corps, in Vietnam from 1965 to 1967. For my first Thanksgiving in Vietnam in 1965, IVS gave a canned ham to all volunteers. I should have been thankful, but I wanted turkey. Hey, I’m a poultry specialist! But there were no turkeys to be found in Vietnam, not even in the military PX. At least not fresh ones — they did have canned turkey, and canned pumpkin, canned sweet potatoes. Still, I had the fixings for a real Thanksgiving. I even got white potatoes for the mashed potatoes and gravy. White potatoes don’t do well in the tropics, and Dalat, in the mountains just west of Phan Rang, was the only place in Vietnam that grew white potatoes.
All that was too much to eat by myself. Besides, what’s Thanksgiving without a big gathering of friends and family? So I invited all the Vietnamese specialists I was working with and put on the spread. I ran into trouble with the pumpkin pies. I couldn’t find the spices I needed, and it was too late to go back to the PX in Saigon.
No one in the market place could help me. The proprietors of the small restaurant where I ate for $10 a month never heard of them. It was the far east, right? Where spices come from? There were names for all the spices I was looking for in my English-Vietnamese dictionary, so they should have been in Vietnam. Finally, I learned the spices I was looking for could be found in the Chinese medicine shop — with the ground tiger bones, bear bile and cow placenta. Nutmeg was a whole seed I had to grind.
Next problem — where to bake the pies? The Vietnamese cooked on charcoal and didn’t use ovens, and I didn’t have an oven. I finally arranged to use the ovens in the military advisor’s compound, just in time for my dinner. I made four pies: a lime meringue, an apple and two pumpkin. I made an extra pumpkin pie to make sure I had some left over for myself.
The dinner was a big success except for the pumpkin pies. None of my guests had ever seen or heard of a pumpkin pie before. What’s a pumpkin? A kind of squash. No one would even try it. The lime meringue and apple pies quickly disappeared, and I had two whole pumpkin pies to myself. Delicious.
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That is a great story. Only two questions, were you able to find canned, jellied, cranberries and did you have any whipped cream? If no whipped cream, that might explain the lack of interest in the pumpkin pies I mean, what is a pumpkin pie without a slathering of whipped cream?
One more very important thing, thanks for your service. I think I speak for most here when I say that. Ditto's below if you agree.
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