“You can always generate great conversation around food, and perhaps more understanding about different cultures and heritages while at it. Everyone has something different to share, so why make the same thing, the same way, each and every year?” – Cathy Erway

Erway, Cathy. “Curried Sweet Potato Dumplings.” Not Eating Out in New York. N.p., 26 Nov. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

For my mentor text, I chose a blog post, written by Cathy Erway, from the blog Not Eating Out In New York. This blog features recipes and articles for those who are trying to save money by cooking good food at home instead of eating out at restaurants (remind you of Leanne Brown much?). For this specific blog post, Cathy tells us how to make curried sweet potato dumplings as a Thanksgiving side dish. As with most other web-based blog posts, Cathy prefaces the steps and “how-tos” of the recipe with some background of what makes this recipe so special. With this, she answers the so what? who cares? we discussed the other day in class when talking about rhetorical situations. Although she was born and raised in America, she comes from an Asian background and is a vegetarian. So, when it comes time for Thanksgiving, she’s not that inclined to cooking the traditional turkey with cranberry sauce recipe. She discusses her family’s tradition of doing an Asian infused meal the night before Thanksgiving and then also celebrating the American holiday the night after with the rest of the country.

With this in mind, she presents a combination of elements from those two meals: curried sweet potato dumplings. Part Thanksgiving (sweet potatoes) and Part Asian/vegetarian infused (dumplings). This dish serves to not only incorporate some of her Asian cultural background, but also to mix it up and get creative with cooking a side dish that time of year. And what better way than to incorporate sweet potatoes, a seasonal vegetable that is often the epitome of the side dishes in a Thanksgiving feast (other than stuffing, of course). Another part of this blog post that speaks to a wider audience that may not abide by her same exact dietary protocol and/or have the same ethnic background. She is able to relate her experience with Asian cuisine to others with similar relationships to other cuisines that may be more important to them. In this way, she speaks to not just Asian-Americans, but to people of all backgrounds and cultural experiences that may be looking to get creative on during that time of the year.

Lastly, she paints the picture of making dumplings in the kitchen together with family, since Thanksgiving is traditionally thought of as a family gathering. In this way, she makes cooking this dish with family seem easy to imagine and fun to do. This recipe serves as a mentor text for me when determining which genre to choose because she is able to give such personality and incorporate story telling into a recipe.