Giving Thanksgiving

Pop culture has told us all that preparing ones first Thanksgiving dinner is a defining moment in our lives. Maybe it wasn’t definitive but it was awesome. Last night some friends and I went shopping in preparation of our 27 person Thanksgiving feast, the total cost ended up being around 150₤ which would be something like 290 US dollars, and I was probably carrying over 60 pounds of food on my back as we left the grocery store. We could only find a 17 pound turkey but it worked wonderfully.

Today we started cooking. I didn’t so much cook as prepare. I washed and prepared the lettuce for the salad, peeled yams, washed pots, peeled and sliced apples for the apple crisps, and then watched and rotated the turkey (which, lets be honest, is probably the most important job…okay maybe not but let me pretend). You might be asking…”Rotate the turkey?” and yes, fortunately I knew from cooking many a pizza that the ovens here do not cook evenly and because of the fan in the back often blacken that back while the front is left a perfect golden brown. So, we would check and rotate. Eventually all the food was prepared and we took it all over to the room we had reserved in Newman hall. The room was unseen to us but was actually perfect, the table was big enough to fit everyone around and had kitchens nearby to warm and freeze what we needed to.

I was (as was everyone else, American or British) amazed at how well everything turned out. It was literally perfect. The food was all delicious and there wasn’t a single disaster or even a change of plans. The yams were to die for, the mashed potatoes were delicious, the green beans with bacon were BACON!, the stuffing was fantastic, the cranberry sauce…not as good as my family’s but still great, the turkey moist and delectable, the breads were wheaty, the punch satisfactory, and the apple crisps BRILLIANT! I probably forgot something but it was good too.

It was fun to be able to do this for all the British students since a lot of them had never had a Thanksgiving meal or celebration before…which of course makes sense…but still is weird. A couple British girls brought down American flags and hung them in the room (which was weird, but what are you going to do…my favorite part was when they taped a couple American dollar bills to one of them…and I thought, “that’s an interesting way to look at it”). Some of them came down dressed normally but then when they saw the magnitude of the food decided to go back and get dressed up a little more which was really fun. I said a little prayer for us and then we dug into the food. There was totally enough food for everyone which was a blessing and as we sat there with our belly’s food we went around the table and shared what we were thankful for. It was just a great time, and interesting to not be on the receiving end of a cultural experience. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and all of us who put it on were completely satisfied and probably enjoyed it even more than anyone else.