South Florida families mix foods of their homelands with tradition of their new country

When Luis Montero and his family sit down for dinner today in Weston, the turkey will be stuffed with rice, raisins and eggs.

Montero says the recipe will be familiar to other Peruvian-Americans, and after 15 years in the United States, he considers it a traditional part of his Thanksgiving Day meal. A meal that marks one of the most significant holidays of his adopted country.

"The way I understand it, it's the day to say thanks for everything you have," says Montero.

Whether it's celebrated with mashed potatoes and gravy or rice and beans, the Thanksgiving meal takes on as many mutations as there are nationalities in South Florida.

In the Loxahatchee home of Walner and Marie Joseph, customary Haitian food meets American. "It's not really an all American dinner," says Walner Joseph. "It's kind of mingled with food from our country."

Fifteen years after leaving Haiti, the Josephs will serve rice and beans and a version of creamed corn called chaka. And while a whole roast turkey is traditionally American, the Josephs cut theirs into pieces. It's then boiled and fried.

"Our children don't like it when we put it in the oven," says Joseph. "We like it well done."

Nelva Garcia moved from Havana to Hollywood six years ago. Family members who have been here for three decades bring "the American food." Garcia will serve roast pork, black beans and rice, and bunuelos, a deep-fried anise-flavored confection.

"There have always been regional differences in the Thanksgiving meal," says Diane Morgan, author of The Thanksgiving Table: Recipes and Ideas to Create Your Own Holiday Tradition. "In New England, they probably stay closest in terms of traditional Thanksgiving foods. In Maryland, you see a prevalence of oyster stuffing. People in the South have more of a sweet tooth, so they make more sweets than I prefer to make."

But as she has traveled the country, Morgan says she also has seen differences based on nationality and ethnicity.

"I was talking to this group of women who had all emigrated from China and they said they always have a rice-based stuffing," says Morgan. "They're blending a rice-based diet with American tradition."

The green bean and sweet potato casseroles many eat are not so much traditional as they are holdovers from the 1950s, when food science and marketing transformed the way Americans cook.

Today's meal harks back only vaguely to the first Thanksgiving shared by the newly arrived English and the first Americans, members of the Wampanoag tribe. Research indicates they likely feasted on boiled turkey and lobster, hominy pudding and stewed pumpkin.

But for children of immigrants, the Thanksgiving meal can be a test of wills.

Janet Ribera, of Boca Raton, used to beg her Lebanese-born, Dominican-raised mother and Cuban-born father to stop serving black beans and rice.

"Thanksgiving is an American tradition," Ribera remembers saying. "What's with this black beans and rice? We need turkey! We need stuffing! We need to make it American."

Arabic dishes join American ones on the holiday table of Palestinian-American Basimeh Hammad.

"The grandkids want to have the turkey even though everyone's not crazy about it," says Hammad, who will host a dozen for dinner today at her home in Plantation. Along with turkey, she'll serve stuffed grape leaves, stuffed squash, lentil soup, humus and rolled baklava. Her daughter Shireen Milaji remembers the family having lamb stuffed with rice, pine nuts and ground beef.

Rachel Haratz had known about Thanksgiving but celebrated it for the first time when she moved from Brazil to Fort Lauderdale six years ago.

"We love holidays," she said. "We celebrate everything we can. We need to thank God everyday for everything, but at least we have one day special for this."

Instead of using bread, Haratz stuffs her turkey with farofa, a staple in many Brazilian homes. It has yuca flour as its base and she adds garlic, bacon and fried onions to her farofa stuffing.

Marcia McGhie, of Lauderhill, says mashed potatoes weren't served when she was growing up in Jamaica. But after more than 30 years here, she puts them out along with traditional rice and pigeon peas.

McGhie says Jamaican-Americans also tend to load up the Thanksgiving table with a variety of meats.

"We always have to have our jerk chicken and jerk pork and curried goat," she said. "There might be oxtails and fish."

And what about turkey, which she never ate in Jamaica?

"We do turkey just to have it on the table," McGhie said. "Some like it. Some don't."