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A mom's Thanksgiving feast
It was my mother’s favorite food, and she took great pains to make her special chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner.
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Dr. Brian Treco - Thu, 27, Nov 2025
- 09:24 EST
- 23
Representative Image / Gemini AI-generated
I’ve been privileged to have a good window into the Indian community, and it amazes and pleases me to see how the Bay Area's Indian community has embraced the very American tradition of Thanksgiving.
I can’t find any analogous festival in India, but the idea seems to resonate with those of Indian origin who’ve chosen here as their home. The food bears little resemblance to anything you’d find in India, but somehow it works.
Some time back, my sister-in-law and her husband came over from India during Thanksgiving week. We had not planned to put together a Thanksgiving dinner, but on Wednesday afternoon, my sister-in-law said it would be a shame if we couldn’t have the traditional dinner the next day.
I said, “No problem—I can put that together,” and picked up a turkey breast, some Stove Top stuffing, cans of yams and cranberry sauce, and dinner rolls. She made one of her potato recipes, and in an hour or two, it was all done. Not as my mother would have done it, but she got her Thanksgiving feast.
It's because of my mother that my view of Thanksgiving is different from most others'. While people immediately think of turkey, my brothers and I think of chestnuts. It was her favorite food, and she took great pains to make her special chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner.
It was by far the most arduous and time-consuming part of the meal, as it required pressure-cooking and painstakingly peeling the chestnuts so the consistency would be just right for the bird. I did not even try to work them into the makeshift dinner above.
Since then, logistics have made it much easier to get chestnuts already in the form she would have liked, but at the time, it was years away. In the meantime, while visiting friends in France’s Ardèche district (which is pretty far from most major cities and tourist attractions), our hosts pointed us towards the Clément Faugier factory, where they were very creative with the chestnut and sold chestnut butters, all kinds of roasted chestnuts, candied chestnuts, canned chestnuts for cooking, and much more.
I’m grateful that we were able to bring back a load of chestnut creations for my mom. It was educational as well to see what could be done with what is a rather “sleepy” food over here. I’d have loved to take her to the factory, but those days were long over.
I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving, and while most of us are thinking about turkey, I’ll always think of chestnuts.
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