Thanksgiving is coming, The Turkey's getting Fat...
Its that time of year again. The time of year where the television is full of ads scored with children's choirs singing carols and store windows are full of displays and window decals with penguins dancing with wrapped packages. Which for me, as an American, means Thanksgiving! Last year, I held a Thanksgiving feast for my housemates and a few of the other masters' students and it was a huge success. This year, my friend Anne-Marie and I decided to co-host the event. It became a magical refuge that felt very much like home.
When you prepare for Thanksgiving, anywhere you have it, you have to start with a menu and a guest list. Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates being thankful for what you have and that to us meant inviting our friends here in Wales. When all was said and done we'd invited around twenty people. Which brings us to the menu. If you have twenty people coming over for dinner to celebrate a holiday none of them have ever celebrated before, you want to have as much tradition on the table as possible. We started with the centerpiece, Anne-Marie's boyfriend Eamonn has a bigger house than either of us have and he offered us the space; he also offered to take on the bird which was a whopping 19.4 pounds. Which left Anne-Marie and I to faff about the side dishes. The line in the dishes ended up resembling a wonky mason-dixon line with Anne-Marie making such dishes as Mach Choux and cornbread dressing and me filling in with the green bean casserole, cranberry relish and what came to be known as "Yankee stuffing" (It was a lovely apple and sausage affair.) To this mix there was also added sweet potato casserole, squash casserole, sugar snap peas, mashed potatoes and some really spectacular homemade gravy. And, of course, we had pie for dessert. I made a chocolate pecan pie and Anne-Marie provided mini-pumpkin (ish) pies (they were actually butternut squash), key lime pie, and a cherry cheese pie.
But, long before we could ever get to the end product that was the actual and awesome meal, we had to begin by navigating the grocery store.
Most American recipes are full of helpful descriptions of amounts like, "half stick of butter" or "one can carnation sweetened condensed milk". Which, unfortunately do not translate because butter does not always come and sticks and can sizes vary with country. On top of this, there is the added bonus of many staples of traditional American food just not being available places that are not America. Things like, dark corn syrup and French's fried onions. So, you make do.
Instead of just using a can of sweetened condensed milk, Anne-Marie weighed out what she thought was the appropriate measurement. This made for a slightly soupy cherry cheese pie. Instead of using crunchy onions, I used pickled pearl onions and cheese and onion potato chips. This gave the green bean casserole a slightly vinegar taste.
But, the hardest one to deal with was the corn syrup, because in order to make pecan pie you need something that is equal to taste and texture as dark corn syrup. In the end, I settled for black treacle. This had the color of tar with the consistency of corn syrup and a slight flavor or molasses. The pie turned out fine in the end. I left the last slice with one of Eamonn's housemates. When I asked if he wanted it, his face lit up.
The feast raged until well past 11, and then it strolled along merrily until 1:30 in the morning. Worn out, John and I took a cab with our leftovers back to our flat where we snuggled on the sofa and watched a documentary on symbolism. I ended up going to bed around 3 o'clock.
Thanksgiving is one of those traditions that I used to look at with skepticism. It was so close to Christmas, why did we bother? On top of that, when we're told the whole story of the pilgrims which makes you secretly wonder if it should be named something like, as Sarah suggests, "Happy National Kill the Natives in the Name of Colonialism Day". But, regardless of how I used to feel, I am now grateful for this tradition that has given me the opportunity to pause and appreciate all that I have, and to share that bounty with people that I have made my life brighter since I have moved so far from home.
