This year marked my very first Thanksgiving away from home. Normally I can depend on other members of my family to do the heavy lifting (read: bird wrasslin'), while I contribute a few dishes and an extremely healthy appetite. I love Thanksgiving, possibly above all other holidays, because of the spending of massive amounts of time in the kitchen and the lovely smells and the friends and the family and, of course, the eating. So, being away from home, I decided that I would simply have to host a full-on Thanksgiving of my own, and also that it was probably my duty to give unto my new friends the joy that is this most delicious of holidays. And so I set about trying to make it all happen.
I started menu planning and recipe hunting weeks ahead of time. I enthusiastically invited way more people than my dorm-kitchen would comfortably hold. I contacted local farms, searching for the best option for procuring a free-range fowl an entire month before fresh turkeys are usually supplied in England (being the traditional Christmas Dinner fare over here in devoid-of-Thanksgiving land).
One of my classmates (who is American but has lived in England for about 30 years) took pity on me while I was lamenting the sheer magnitude of groceries I needed to buy and the cruel state of automobile-less-ness I find myself in which makes transporting such a quantity of groceries back to my flat nearly impossible. She drove me to the giant Sainbury's outside of town and spent 2 hours wandering the aisles with me, helping me find everything on my list and educating me on appropriate substitutions for ingredients that aren't to be found here. So instrumental (no crisco - so Trex Vegetable Lard for my piecrusts; no karo corn syrup - so Golden Syrup for my pecan pie; successful location of creamed corn - imported from Canada, apparently; successful location of cranberry sauce, ocean spray in a jar, not a can; successful location of Ritz crackers, in a tiny box).
As I had class all day on Wednesday and Thursday, I decided to have my Thanksgiving party on Sunday. This also gave me 2 and a half days of preparation time. And boy did I make the most of it. On Friday I went on my final market and grocery store runs (for the perishable items I couldn't get ahead of time, and including 8 lbs of white potatoes, 8lbs of sweet potatoes, and 4 lbs of apples... heavy!) and made some cranberry-apple relish as well as four pie crusts worth of dough. Saturday was pick up the turkey from the market/pie-making day; 17.2 lbs of bird hauled home by Amanda and I/two pumpkin, one pecan, and one apple (for which my dear grandmother had to read me the recipe over the phone). I also cubed two loaves of bread for the stuffing and made turkey giblet/neck stock for the gravy.
Sunday was the big day. I got up early, finished making the stuffing, mushed some inside of Bernard (the turkey), then rubbed him with butter and spices and lovingly draped him in fresh herbs and bacon. Not to mention the half-hourly basting in wine and butter. Yum. We peeled a ridiculous number of potatoes, whipped up some green beans and shallots in balsamic butter, churned out a couple of baking dishes of scalloped corn, and simmered a big pot of spiced cider. I even made gravy - with the giblet stock and drippings (something I have never done before), and it was dern tasty if I do say so myself. Oh, and for those of you out there who don't like the traditional overly sweet marshmellow-and-brown sugar sweet potato casserole, I have discovered
the secret to delicious savory mashed sweet potatoes (okay, somebody else discovered it, but I'm happy to copy genius). You boil them in cream. Believe me, it's worth trying.
All in all, it was a huge success. We had about 20 people show up, we all ate until we could barely walk, and still there were vast quantities of left-overs (just the way I like it). More than 10 different countries were represented, and contributions of food (I asked people to bring dishes inspired by cultural or family traditions) included fried plantains, baklava, stuffed grape leaves, dutch beef stew, cheesecake, venezuelan potato salad, canadian cornbread, spanish omlets, greek salad and crepes, among other things. It was a feast. And even my very first solo turkey turned out to be pretty scrumptious. And today, Bernard proved himself again by yielding very tasty turkey soup.
I had SO MUCH help - I couldn't have done it without everybody. So thanks for lending me pots and pans and knives and bowls (and a meat thermometer), and tables and chairs and a coffee pot, and for helping me grocery shop, and for chopping things and cooking things and washing HUGE amounts of dishes, and for traveling by train to join the festivities, and for bringing dishes and wine to share, and taking leftovers home, and for vacuuming and decorating and un-decorating, and for coming to help make my first Thanksgiving away from home a fabulous experience, and for being excellent company. You guys rock. And if you want to see more pictures, go
here.
And now I'm going back for my second round of leftovers today. Awesome.
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