On Tuesday, I took 4 tiny bags of dried cranberries and soaked them in cranberry juice overnight. Then, on Wednesday, I put them into a saucepan (with some of the juice) and cooked them for a while. After that, I added orange marmalade, cinnamon and a pinch of ginger and let it simmer and then gel. I think all together it cost 6,50 euros (probably about 8 dollars)....which is quite a bit more than the $2.50 for a bag of cranberries at stop and shop (yes I checked peapod´s website)....but it was well worth it because one of the teachers at the dinner said she had never before tried the cranberries and that she really liked it.
The other thing we prepared ahead of time was dessert. Instead of making whole pies, we made apple and pumpkin turnovers. The pumpkin was actually a roasted squash which did resemble a pumpkin that you would see in the US. Our turnovers turned out to be more like apple and pumpkin empanadas, but they were pretty tasty.
We made and seasoned the filling Wednesday night, which is when we also ripped up some baguettes to have stale bread for stuffing. The other preparation was to move a table out of Cecilia’s room because it was the biggest one in our apartment. I knew we couldn’t move it work because I had already measured the whole thing, but we tried anyway. We wound up having our Moroccan neighbors help us take the hallway door off its hinges and then some legs of the table. The table is now going to stay in the living room and the smaller one is going to Cecilia’s room.
Thursday, Cecilia and Erin bought the turkey while I was at school. When we all got home, we immediately started frying onions to go on top of the green bean casserole they were making. Cecilia dipped onions into milk and then batter and Erin fried them. I watched and took pictures. Then we pealed potatoes and yams to get those ready to be cooked.
The turkey bags were assembled and put into the oven. Next, the yams were cooked and I added maple syrup (from a previous grocery shopping trip in a larger city), sugar and cinnamon. They were put into a pan to go into the oven. We also assembled the stuffing: sautéed onions, celery, bread cubes and chicken broth. That went into a pan to go into the oven. The green bean casserole took a little longer because we had to make the mushroom soup from a packet and we made it way to thin at first. Erin added a bunch of flour to thicken it up (it worked). Cecilia heated cans of corn, added butter, salt and Parmesan cheese to it before baking it in the oven. She also manned the mash potatoes, adding mozzarella cheese to them (I did not eat these). After noticing that the turkey on the top rack was done, we got it out and the side dishes went into the oven. My sautéed broccoli was basically left unattended and somehow (magically) cooked itself. I started carving turkey as guests were arriving. Neither of the other girls knew how to carve a turkey, so I wound up carving the entire thing.
Dad, I finally appreciate all of your hard work and I know understand why it takes an entire roll of paper towels to carve a turkey. We had a really shitty knife, which later came apart (blade from handle) when I was washing it. Erin managed to get enough drippings from our bagged turkey to make gravy. The flavors of the lemon and garlic we had put into the bags meant it was really delicious.
Somehow, even with our lack of experience, all of the dishes managed to make it out to the table at about the same time. We sat down to dinner a little after 9:30 and the food was really good. Our guests agreed that their favorites were the gravy and the yams (my concoction!).
We had nine people at our dinner: four teachers from my school, one from Cecilia’s who brought a friend, and the three of us. For the six Spanish people, it was their first Thanksgiving and they really seemed to like it. I gave a history lesson on the meaning behind the holiday (which most of them had already heard me tell their students). My aunt had mailed me a postcard (which I got the day before) of Plymouth, Mass. which had a picture of the Mayflower and a map of Cape Cod on it. We went around the table saying what we were thankful for. I had also printed some turkey trivia facts and we played a guessing game with those.
For dessert, we had the turnovers and Ana (English teacher) made a “cake” for David’s birthday. Really the thing was like a gigantic lemon flan. It had milk, cream and lemon gel and tasted like lemon candies (the flavor was not at all subtle). It never really solidified in the fridge, so we scooped it out of the pan. Afterwards, Cecilia, Erin and I agreed that it was a flop, but everyone told Ana it was delicious. We sent the guests home with tons of leftovers and then cleaned the apartment.
Everything at our dinner was delicious, but it tasted even better because we had made it all ourselves. Everything was made from scratch using unfamiliar ingredients (ie: random squash) and nothing was measured because we didn’t have any measuring cups and all of our recipes were in “cups” and here everything is measured in “grams.” Even if we had purchased measuring cups, we would have had to have done a huge math conversion to make the whole thing work out anyway. We also used an oven with no temperature gage and made a turkey for the first time. The only dishes that had ever been made before (by any of us at least) were cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, sautéed broccoli and green bean casserole. Thanksgiving staples like stuffing, yams and gravy had always been done by our parents and grandparents. We were really proud of our dinner, especially when Erin’s boyfriend called and said their gravy came out of a can (they had an entire turkey, and thus, drippings) and their stuffing was Stove Top.
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