Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving weekend just finished, and thanks to a bunch of friends that wanted to share in the celebration, it still really felt like Thanksgiving, even though I am a million miles from home.  I actually haven't spent too many Thanksgivings in Seattle recently (been traveling places, such as South Africa, Japan, etc), and even when I've been home, we've gone out to dinner.  So, it's actually been a long time since I've had a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner (Mom, are you reading this??).  So I thought I should have one this year in Poland!

I found out through the American Embassy that the Sheraton hotel was having a Thanksgiving dinner buffet.  Yes, I repeat: I emailed the American Embassy asking how I could find Thanksgiving dinner here. I asked some of my friends here if they'd be interested in going with me, and the pleasant surprise was that many people were. Then I started thinking that maybe I should cook...so I asked if they wanted to cook on Saturday instead.  That conversation turned into "why not do both?", so that's what we did. 

Dinner on Thursday was great.  In the end, due to things coming up, only 4 of the 8 originally scheduled to come to the Sheraton could make it.  Nobody was American, so I really appreciated that they were interested. Dinner was great, and I had my normal 3 full plates, in addition to a "dessert" of turkey and stuffing, followed by actual dessert, followed by more dessert, and another piece of turkey.  Ohhhh, just like the good old days.  The buffet tried to trick me with things like smoked salmon, peas, and some kind of creole rice, but I would not be distracted by these imposter Thanksgiving dishes.  I stuck to the turkey, cranberries, stuffing, mashed and sweet potatoes, pumpkin soup, and some roast beef for good measure.  I even had two leaves of lettuce to top it off, because I am trying to eat healthy.  2.5 hours and the equivalent of $30 USD later, I waddled home. 

Oh, did I mention that I had bought a pumpkin for pumpkin pie earlier that day?  I had no where to put it during dinner, so I checked it at coat check.  Yea, you heard that right. The lady was dressed in a nice suit, taking black overcoats from all the well-dressed people attending a party in the hotel, then I come in and leave a 15 lb pumpkin on the counter and look at her with an innocent smile.  She looked back at me in disbelief.  I tried to convince her with my eyes that this is normal and it's no problem (like a Jedi mind trick).  It worked (of course).  She didn't even charge me an "oversized luggage" fee. Thanksgiving part 1 is a success. 

Let's rewind a little to when I started thinking about what I could cook for the Saturday dinner at my place.  The menu was easy.  Turkey, stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes (for some reason I was more for this than regular mashed potatoes), and of course pumpkin pie.  As I looked up some recipes for these items, I realized that there were several key items that were going to be difficult to find.  Such as a turkey, sweet potatoes, a pumpkin and pretty much everything else to make pumpkin pie.  Not only that, but surprise surprise, everything is still written in Polish around here, making it even harder to locate the items I need in the store.  I couldn't figure out how to find "sage" or "cloves" or a lot of other things, so my friend Monika wrote me a cheat sheet, with both translation and pictures of what it might look like. She's saved my life here on many occasions already!  If you have a magnifying glass, you might be able to read this excerpt of what she made for me.

To find everything I needed, I went to about 10 stores, consulted several locals, and was even tempted to buy things online. There is no canned Libby's pumpkin here, but it's also hard to find a regular pumpkin!  In order to make the pie, I had to buy the fat pumpkin, let it hang out for a few hours in coat check, buy a hand mixer and a cheese cloth to drain the liquid out of the puree, a rolling pin, pie dish, and spatula.  Oh, but I couldn't find a cheesecloth, so I used coffee filters (don't laugh, it worked!).  It took me about 10 hours when you add up the time to find/buy all this stuff (I went to about 6 different places looking for a pumpkin), cook the pumpkin in order to puree it, wait for it to cool, puree it, filter it through the coffee filters, mix it, make the crust, bake it, and clean the hot pumpkin juice (and guts) that splashed all over the kitchen. 10 hours and $75 worth of purchases later, I have a pie.  And to think, if Libby's existed here, this would have taken 2 hours and cost $20.  But here it is.  And it was worth it!

Everything else was fairly straight forward (or not).  It took me at least 7 stores to find a turkey, and it barely fit into my fridge and oven.  I have no dishes big enough to brine the turkey in, so I used a cooler, and had to clean the turkey juice out of the cooler in my miniature shower. Nobody sells sweet potatoes, so when I finally found them, they were $15 for 6!  I made the cranberry sauce from scratch, but only after a Polish lady in a shop somehow tricked me into buying them without saying a word of English to me (I fell for the Jedi mind trick).  And finally, the stuffing was done in the bird, even though I have a box of Stove Top with me from SF.  That's being saved for a rainy day. 

Here's all of the food I made. 




My friends also brought dishes representing their culture (Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, etc...)...some great salads, meats, vodka, etc.  My Egyptian friend Seif brought chips and pretzels.  I guess he didn't understand the theme, as I don't think the snacks were of Egyptian background...  Anyway, it was a great meal!

I am really thankful that this turned out to be a good meal, and that my friends here were interested in celebrating a holiday with me that they aren't used to celebrating.  I made everyone go around the table and say what they were thankful for. Overall, we were mostly thankful that all of our paths have crossed in Warsaw.  It's only been 2 months, but I am already starting to feel at home here.  And there's nothing like spending a holiday with some friends to prove it.



By the way, it was also the first snow of the year...