Thankfully, (no pun intended) I had the chance to talk to some of you about my holidays, but for those of you who I haven’t talked to personally, time to update. Let’s rewind a month and talk about Thanksgiving. My roommates and I decided that we would attempt the most traditional Thanksgiving dinner possible under the circumstances. So what was on the menu? Cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, biscuits, and a red velvet cake for dessert. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for me) our oven is much too small to cook a turkey so we got a couple of rotisserie chickens to substitute. I didn’t mind this one bit seeing as I don’t even really like turkey. Sounds pretty basic right….wrong. Here are just a few of the challenges we ran into. The broccoli casserole was my dish. That turned out to be the easiest because the only ingredient I had to substitute was cheddar for Velveeta cheese, no big deal. (I was shocked that I found Ritz crackers, though!) The cheesy potatoes were made by my friend Hayley. Two challenges: 1) You can’t just buy a big bag of frozen hash brown potatoes, so they were all cut and cooked by hand. 2) Sour cream does not exist in Spain, so she used plain yogurt. Next, my other roommate Mary decided to do the green bean casserole with, again, two challenges: 1)No Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. (we later found out that they do sell it at one store, but it was too late by that time) So, she had to use this powdered soup and it took us a couple times to get the consistency right. 2) No French fried onions – the key ingredient. However, this was a blessing in disguise because she ended up frying onions in corn flakes, and they were absolutely delicious. Lastly, don’t even get me started on the red velvet cake because that was a HUGE pain in the butt. I had to go to about 4 different supermarkets and spend way too much money to find all of the ingredients. The red food coloring was really weak, even with two bottles, so the cake turned out this weird mauve color, and I couldn’t find buttermilk, so I made my own. Yes, I made my own buttermilk, be impressed. On top of that, they don’t sell frosting, so I had to make that from scratch too. Oh, so in case you try to contact me, I’ve changed my name to Betty Crocker. So after slaving away in the kitchen all day with my roommates, I now know what all you parents go through every Thanksgiving and I appreciate it so much more. I will say, the hard worked definitely paid off. We had a few Spanish friends over, as well, to show them a real American Thanksgiving, and everything tasted sooooo good. I couldn’t find my camera that day on account of my room being a pig sty, so here are some pictures my roommate, Hayley, took of our quaint little Thanksgiving away from home.
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| Me with the food - haven't even had time to take off the oven mitts! |
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| Creepy pterodactyl shaped bone I pulled out of the chicken after "carving" it. |
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| Bon Apetit! I took a page out of my Dad's book and served myself last : ) |
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| Everyone at the table, ready to eat! |
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| And the grand finale! |
So there ya have it. And although our dinner was really great and so was the company, I still missed home like crazy. I was able to skype with some of you for a little while, but the connection was terrible. I was so frustrated by the end of the conversation that when I hung up I started crying. Not to worry though, just a wave of homesickness, but I realized that I have a lot to be thankful for on both side of the Atlantic so I let it all out and regrouped. Next post will be a little out of order, because I'm going to post Christmas stuff, then Amsterdam. Stay tuned!
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