Turkey and egg rolls? Every family has its holiday traditions to uphold

For the last two weeks, while grocery shoppers about town have been hunting down cans of pumpkin and cranberry jelly, I've been scouring Bluffton store shelves for a certain kind of egg roll wrapper.

A girl can always hope.

As a kid, I knew the holidays to be a time for making egg rolls. My family would eat turkey, yes, and a few weeks later, ham. But somewhere in between the fourth Thursday of November and Dec. 25, we would stir fry what to my childhood eyes seemed like barrels of pork, shrimp and vegetables, swaddle the pulp tightly in dozens of papery shells, then cook them to a crisp in a bath of hot oil for Christmastime celebrations.

To many, egg rolls are simply tubular, deep-fried appetizers. To me, they are icons of holidays at home.

Like so many first-generation immigrants, I have to work to maintain some connection to the culture of my parents. My mom and dad -- a Chinese boy turned University of Michigan alumnus turned computer whiz; and a Filipino woman, transplanted to Chicago in 1968 to practice nursing -- had all-American dreams for their only child, many of which involved law or medical school, and none of which entailed her obsessing over what kind of egg roll wrapper to use for Thanksgiving or Christmas meals as an adult.

But food is one of the reliable ways I can still identify with my Asian heritage, so making egg rolls has become not just a form of cooking, but commemoration. I've started to see family recipes as heirlooms: handed down reminders of how ancestors I never knew nourished the woman I've become.

And during my first full holiday season in the Lowcountry, as I celebrate the Yuletide days in a region that's become more familiar to me over the past 11 months, keeping one of those food traditions doesn't feel quaint so much as necessary. How else will I remember what Christmas used to taste like? Is it possible I might forget?

Maybe that's why I've been relentless in my search for the right kind of egg roll wrapper -- "egg roll skins," as my parents called them. Unlike the thick, sticky, rectangular dough that envelops most commercial egg roll filling and is stocked frequently on store shelves, my family recipe calls for lumpia wrappers: tissue paper-thin pancakes made from flour, cornstarch, water and eggs. A stack of 20 might layer half an inch high.

But despite my aggressive hunt in the weeks leading up to Turkey Day, I haven't been able to find lumpia wrappers around Bluffton. Publix? No. Kroger? Nuh-uh. Piggly Wiggly? Target? Wal-Mart? Nope.

As I've driven into and out of store parking lots up and down U.S. 278 this November, I've wondered if chasing lightweight egg roll casings along the South Carolina coast is a zanily futile or charmingly optimistic quest. I suppose I'm no more unconventional than my friends who insist Thanksgiving is complete only if they eat sweet potatoes, not yams. Pumpkin pie, not pecan. Cornbread stuffing, not Stove Top. Like anyone who clings to custom during this time of year, a part of me believes only a particular kind of ingredient will do.

There is a fine line between being faithful to rituals and being rigid. I hope my search leans toward the former. I only know that, like so many who move from one city or state (or, like my parents, one nation) to another, I struggle with hanging on to a few traditions from home, while adapting to what now surrounds me.

Which means this Christmas, for the first time, there may be Lowcountry shrimp in my family's egg rolls -- so long as I can find the right wrappers. I haven't given up just yet. The holidays, if anything, are a time for hope.