Mi blog es tu blog

Photo: Saveur

Let’s be honest: Just as any other holiday, Thanksgiving has become mostly another good reason to eat and drink in excess (at least in my case.)

But if a 3 pm “dinner” of turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce seems a little boring to you, you can always throw a “Latino Thanksgiving,” which basically means a three-day smörgåsbord of lechón, tamales, arroz, frijoles, elote, tostones, tequila, poker games — and plenty of dancing and family drama.

If any of the above sounds exciting enough, you are in luck.

Here are 8 SIMPLE STEPS to turn your regular Thanksgiving into a Latino one:

1. Turkey? Who eats turkey? Run to the closest bodega and pick the biggest lechón available. Roast and stuff an apple on its mouth while you’re at it.
2. Cranberry sauce? We don’t even know what that is. Get a mojo going or start a guajillo marinade for said lechón
3. Start with plenty of tamales and make sure to serve rice, beans, gandules, tostones and/or plantains on the side.
4. Pumpkin? Who eats pumpkin? Really. Pumpkin is only good when you use its flowers to make one of these.
5. Start serving dinner at 10 pm, because, really, who has dinner at 3 pm?
6. Once the meal is over, and liters of alcohol have been consumed, be ready for your mother, tía or abuela to start crying inconsolably over you not visiting more often, etc.
7. No football. Who watches football? It’s not like it’s fútbol… Take out the baraja, the poker chips and open up the wallet.
8. Turn up the music and dance like maniacs all night long. And do not worry about thy neighbor. Thy neighbor should be thankful to have a Latino family around. After all, what is Thanksgiving if not an opportunity to say gracias?

A Spanish-language version of this blog post first appeared on Univision.com