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.