Thanksgiving

The story of Canadian thanksgiving actually starts well before the actual day, and here in the UK is quite an effort to deal with. First, the UK doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, neither the Canadian or the American (and really why would they? It wasn't their expedition to the Arctic circle, or them almost starving to death), but when you tell them about how it’s a day in which you sit around, socialize and eat all day, they usually think that it’s a good idea and that they would like to partake. Add in all the North Americans that already love the holiday and the event can become rather large, rather quickly. So before we even got to the day of the event we had 14 people RSVP to the event and Rebecca continually inviting more guest. Next, the only time that I have ever come close to cooking a Thanksgiving dinner before was in Morenci two years ago. But, the only reason I say I came close was because I was in the kitchen at the same time that Lance was cooking things. I don’t believe I touched anything. I still hadn't passed Lance’s tests for allowing me to do any actual work.  Now, just a short time after that, I'm the one that cooking and better than that, at the time of writing this, I still haven’t heard of anyone getting sick because of me. Progress.

The first thing that was needed when cooking a Thanksgiving meal for fourteen is a decently sized turkey. This posed two distinct and worrisome problems. The first was that, as you may recall from the first story about cooking, is that we have a very small oven, and fitting a large bird in it would be difficult to say the least. The second was that in the UK, turkeys are really only sold at Christmas time. Since they don’t have Thanksgiving, they don’t have a grocery store full of turkeys in October (or November for the Americans). We were faced with two options. One, we could buy a turkey online from a specialty store for an exorbitant amount, or we found a store in Stowmarket that sold frozen turkeys at a reasonable price. No brainer right? Wrong. After being the person on a two hour train ride with a frozen turkey in their arms, I can guarantee that strange stares that you get are just something not ready for. Second, at about the one hour mark, the turkey will start to defrost and ice/water/red liquid will start dripping everywhere. So yes, I was that crazy person on a train with a large dripping frozen bird in their arms. The second issue that we had with this was that we panicked. Worried that the turkey supply would be limited we purchased and transported the turkey on the Monday, for a Saturday dinner. As I said, by the time I got the bird home, it was already well on its start to defrosting. This meant that putting it in the freezer was not a good idea, but as we found out, putting a defrosting bird in the fridge 5 days early isn’t the best plan either. You would be shocked at the amount of red liquid that will come out of a defrosting turkey and cover the bottom of your fridge. It’s really quite remarkable. Thankfully, other than some worrying and a lot of cleaning, the turkey was still fine on Saturday and was able to be cooked. Otherwise it would have been the multiple chickens from the local grocery store dinner.

After turkey, the things in the meal really become a bit of a discussion and since this was also Rebecca and I’s first Thanksgiving as a married couple we wanted to incorporate things from both our families. Me, I needed to have cranberry cheesecake for dessert. Rebecca, she needed both normal stuffing as well as sausage meat stuffing. After all the different things were added together the meal consisted of: turkey, sage and onion stuffing (both cooked in the turkey and out for the vegetarians), sausage meat stuffing, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, a mixed salad, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, fresh buns, sliced pickles, quorn, gravy, cranberry cheesecake and of course pumpkin pie. It was a production. Thankfully our neighbor and good friend, Stephanie was on board with the ridiculousness of putting that many people in one small London apartment and helped out by letting us use her table, chairs, dishes, cutlery and kitchen. By the end of the cooking time, we had two ovens full of things and 7 of the 8 combined burners being used to cook. All in all, the meal went off great. Everyone seemed to have a good time and other then being reasonably intoxicated by the end of the day, it all went perfectly. Who am I kidding, being reasonably intoxicated was pretty much according to plan as well. Rebecca even helped with the cooking, true, I relegated her to things that could be eaten raw in like the veggies so there was no chance of her poisoning anyone. Kidding, she’s not as bad of a cook as either of us make out and contrary to what she says, she can cook more than a bowl of cereal and a mean takeout.

Welcoming everyone to Thanksgiving dinner.

Actually, I take back that everything went according to plan. Apparently, me and pumpkin pie are bitter enemies. I made two for the Thanksgiving dinner and they were… meh, at best. Most people enjoyed them, but they weren’t the highlight. Thought, even if they were, I have found out that most here in the UK don’t like pumpkin anyways. It’s a travesty, I know. If I had to guess, I think I didn’t add enough of the spices to them, but to be fair I got the pumpkin at 3pm on the day and had to make the pie in quite a rush. The next day however, when I had all the time in the world to make a pie for my coworkers that I promised and forgot to add the eggs, I have no excuse. The pie tasted right this time, but instead of being sturdy and normal, it was more runny and more like apple pie gooey. Oops… I still don’t think this is a good reason for UK contingent telling me that pie was too spicy for them. Oh well, more pie for me.

I am happy that I can say that it was a great day, but I will be the first to say that if anyone asks me to do one for American Thanksgiving in a month, I’m going to tell them to sod off. Sitting on a train with a half frozen bird and the chaos of trying to keep that many dishes from burning (which is something I do regularly enough) is an adventure that I will reserve for only once a year.

Thailand Part 2 – Actually doing things

So far all I have talked about was the joyous adventure of travelling around in Thailand and unfortunately it kind of made it sound as if we didn’t have a good time, which is absolutely the opposite of the  truth. Thailand was gorgeous and I couldn’t have had spent two weeks in a better place. We ended up spending 6 days in Bangkok, 4 days in Chiang Mai and 3 days in Hua Hin and in each place it was a new experience. In Bangkok we lived up the chaotic city life, Chiang Mai we did the group tours of everything as well as night market shopping, and in Hua Hin we sat on the beach and at the pool drinking and wasting the day away. So, I’m going to write about some of the things that I thought we’re the most exciting.

Bangkok

For our first 6 days we were in Bangkok and I swear I went into colour shock. The city itself was a big city. It was covered in the grey of skyscrapers, roads and over ground railways, it was filthy, and it reeked of fish sauce. Around every corner however, was a gorgeous Buddhist temple decorated in the most vibrant colours. On the first day, we started off big and we saw the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and Wat Po with the Reclining Buddha.  

The Grand Palace at Night, still vibrant

Upon entering the Grand Palace, Rebecca and I stood in shock for what seemed to be half an hour simply spinning and taking photos.  Well, Rebecca was taking photos at least. I was making friends with the monkey men warrior figurines.  Wat Po wasn’t much different. Everywhere you turned was another image of Buddha and more vibrant colours. Additionally, Wat Po has some of the most renowned Thai massages so we stopped in there to try that out. Now, let me preface this with the fact that I’m not usually a fan of massages period, but this being our honeymoon and Rebecca’s love of massages, I did it anyways. Also, I’m really NOT flexible, like I can barely touch my mid shin let alone my toes. Next, let me tell you, a traditional Thai massage is nothing like a normal massage. It’s not relaxing, it’s invigorating…. For over an hour I had a 5 foot 4 Thai guy beating the crap out of me. Some of my favorite maneuvers were:  The twist your leg and step on your inner thigh, the put my knee in your back and bend you in two and  the screwdriver,  twist your top half as far as he could one way while twisting my bottom half as far as he could the other way. I could see how it would be possible that experience would be enjoyable, but I’m almost certain that my masseuse was confusing my lack of flexibility with tension so every time he did something, he would push to a point that was ok, then feeling some resistance push harder.  After an hour and Rebecca being delighted with the experience, I limped onto the next adventure.  On top of seeing amazingly colourful temples, we would get a blast of neon and blinking lights walking between the subway and our hotel. Unknown to us, our hotel was about a block from Soi Cowboy, one of the various red light districts in Bangkok. 

Floating Markets

The street was full of people and it seemed like quite the place to be, but when we would get up in the morning and have breakfast watching the middle aged white men and young Thai girls come down and eat breakfast too, the desire to really party there dwindled quickly. No matter  how many times we got asked if we wanted to see a ping pong show.  Also, we went to see the floating markets, the concept itself being really cool. The practicality of it however being terrible. It’s extremely hard to shop when you don’t control where you are going.  Compound that by the fact that you can’t go back to anything you pass, and while it is fun to see, you can see how it becomes almost impossible to buy anything you want . 

Chiang Mai

The middle of our trip was spent in Chiang Mai, and was highlighted by three things. The first was the night markets. There were two night markets, one on the weekend that shuts down the entire center of the city and turns all the streets into vendor stalls and the second one that was every night just outside our hotel. 

Night market where we honed our bartering skills

This was where you had to really hone your bartering skills and you had to be smart.  By the end of it, I thought that we were finally starting to get the hang of it too. But almost every time that we would barter something to a price we liked we would find it somewhere else for cheaper. Oh well, apparently Rebecca and I don’t have a career as a salesperson to look forward to. The second thing was the Thai cooking course we went on.  We ended up on the course with another British couple (we apparently have a knack for finding Brits) and a German girl. It was great fun, it’s not like we learnt anything all that ground breaking, but the group we were with was very easy to get along with and chat with and we sat around eating all day. I mean, you can’t really complain about that can you.  

Our Group and Teacher after gorging on food all day.

The last major highlight had to be the elephant park. First, we got to see some of the trained elephants do some tricks like shoot soccer penalty shots and shoot basket ball free throws. Both cool, but not nearly as ridiculous as watching the trainers pull out two easels and have two of the elephants  paint for us and not just random squiggles you could call abstract art. Still in awe of that we then got to go on an elephant ride with a trainer sitting on the elephant’s neck/head trekking us through the jungle. At the halfway point the trainer said that this would be the point we could feed the elephant (who I’m going to name Stampy, he was a bit ornery) some bananas as a treat. He then told me to come sit up in front to feed it. So, as I get down from the nice securely fastened seats and sit on this elephant’s head to feed it, the trainer sneaks into my seat and straps himself in. 

Me, holding on for dear life

As soon as the last of the bananas are eaten, the trainer makes a clicking noise and Stampy was off. I quickly think oh shit, I need to get back to my seat, turn around and see the trainer sitting in my seat telling me that I have to trek the rest of the way back up front. This was definitely riding an elephant. The only thing I would advise to the next person to ride an elephant, long pants. What I didn’t know was that elephants are really quite hairy, and their hair is coarse and hard like steel wire. So, every time Stampy took a step, his hair would rub against my inner leg and take off a new layer of skin, but that was easily worth the experience.

Hua Hin

We ended our trip in Hua Hin, a small fishing town on the Gulf of Thailand. I don’t really have anything to say about it. The extent of it was really spent going from the beach, to the poolside.  It was however, a perfect way to end our adventure to Thailand. 

It was a hard life in Hua Hin as you can tell.