The Thanksgiving Feast... 11/24

So as part of my Spanish classes, I was assigned to prepare the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for my family and some friends here, and along with the dinner tell about the history and tradition of Thanksgiving (in Spanish, of course). It started with writing an invitation, delivering them to our special guests, planning the meal, shopping, cooking, and finally giving my little presentation about Thanksgiving while we all pigged out on turkey. We had the dinner on Friday for the convenience of all – seeing as how its not a holiday weekend here…. The weeks before I had been doing a bit of internet research, requesting recipes, and emailing my mom for turkey tips.

By Thursday the menu was set (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, corn, cranberries, rolls, gravy and pumpkin pie) and I went to the store to pick up all the essentials. Things like sweet potatoes, a roasting pan, potato flakes, and corn were easy. Luckily, my favorite neighborhood store had a small little display of Thanksgiving foods including the Stove Top stuffing and the turkey gravy mix. Unfortunately they were out of cranberries (which were given up on after 3 stores proved fruitless) and come to find out that green beans are a hard find fresh, they don’t exist in the can, I would have had to improvise for the cream of mushroom soup, and the fried onions – yeah, right. Anyway, so that was immediately scratched off the list. It took a bit of hunting to come across pie plates (not big on pies here, I guess…they are more cake people) but ended up having success in that department. When I was at the store I ran into another American girl who was shopping to make Thanksgiving dinner as well. She had run into some of the same difficulties as I had – lack of essential items – and I ended up giving her my pie crust recipe right there in the middle of the store because she couldn’t find a premade one. Talking with her about all that was involved and thinking about the 16 dinner attendants I would be feeding got me a little nervous. Especially considering I had never done more to prepare the Thanksgiving feast than the green bean casserole – and that was the one thing I couldn’t make here!

The last and most important, of course, was the turkey and since my research had taught me that a frozen bird needs a couple days of refrigeration to thaw, I was definitely on the hunt for a fresh one. There were a couple available at my grocery store, but we had decided to also try at Costco in hopes of a better price. We didn’t make it there until early evening, so when it was discovered that they only had frozen solid birds, or precooked “smoked” ones, I got a little anxious and started imaging what we would tell the guests when they arrived to a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. Thank the Lord though that the turkeys I had seen at the first store were there still, although we ended up buying a partially frozen one because it was a bit bigger – 10.9 kg to be exact (about 22 lbs). So that night I let the turkey sit in a bath of warm water to aid in the thawing process, and made the pie crust and had it all ready to go in the pan to alleviate some of the rush in the morning.

Friday started off with making the pumpkin pie at 8am then putting it in the oven so I could have the turkey cooking by 10am. I have never even touched a raw turkey, so it was a little interesting, but with the general instructions from my mom I managed to open it up, remove the innards and stuff it with the stuffing. It turned out to be a very good thing that I put the bird in the oven at 10am (as you will come to find out it took quite a while to get to the point of eating it…). The rest of the day went smoothly – prepping the tables, decorating and putting up a Christmas tree at the school (where I was cooking and we were hosting the big event) and I even got to go for a run while the bird was sweating away in the oven. The rest of the stuff were kind of last-minute things – I had to wait for the turkey to be done to put in the sweet potato casserole, and the corn and the mashed potatoes and gravy would wait until just about eating time as well.

Now I knew the turkey would take awhile to cook but I thought that putting it in at 10am for the 6pm dinner time would be somewhat sufficient. My mom told me that her stuffed 19 lb turkey had taken 6.5 hrs so here I had 8 hrs to spare. Plus, I knew we wouldn’t eat at exactly 6 anyway…people tend to arrive kind of late and you don’t usually walk in the door, sit down and stuff your face right away. But at 6pm when my meat thermometer only read 160 degrees and stayed that way for the next 30 minutes I got a little nervous. I had to call my mom and plead my case for this turkey that had cooked for 8.5 hrs and still only read 160 degrees. (Another note worth mentioning is that Luisa drove around to about 11 different places and ended up having to go all the way in almost downtown San Jose to get a hold of a meat thermometer!) I decided to turn up the oven just the slightest and do my best to be patient. At 7 I saw a little progress on the thermometer and by 7:30pm I was thrilled to find my thermometer read 180 and the built-in timer pop up as well. Finally! It was a hefty guy to pull out of the oven – given the 22lbs of bird plus the additional weight of the stuffing – but I managed. I gave it the mandatory 20-30 minutes of chill time and got the last items in the oven and on the stove before enlisting Luisa’s brother, Benson, to handle the task of carving. I will say that the bird came out a perfect golden brown and glistening. So with the bird all sliced up and the rest of the goods out on the serving table we started the feast about 8pm. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the food, as evidenced by the comments as well as the nearly licked-clean plates that were finally retired to the kitchen.

After eating I shared my bit of history and tradition of Thanksgiving with everyone. It turned out to be almost 20 minutes long, although to me seemed only about 5. I did it all in Spanish and Luisa told me afterward that it had sounded good and very fluid, so that was cool. Then came the pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream and whipping cream (bummer that Cool Whip is not available here…) which was also received with praise, although by already full stomachs.

Luisa and I were at the school until about 11:30pm washing all the dishes and pots and pans and storing the leftovers (a good amount of turkey, a whole pie, and little bits of everything else). It was definitely a long day and very tiring by the end, but definitely worth it! I would say that my first Thanksgiving meal was a smashing success. And it doesn’t hurt that it was probably the best Thanksgiving meal my guests had ever eaten! Ha. That was a little bit of a comfort for me as I was cooking and preparing – at least they couldn’t say “It’s not as good as last year!”