This Thanksgiving was my most memorable to date! I successfully cooked the entire dinner myself and hosted the first Thanksgiving celebration for my non-American friends. It was quite an experience. First off, it took A LOT of planning. My mommy sent me detailed and simple recipes for many of the dishes. Turkeys are rare here and quite expensive (30 euros to be exact). So seeing as I wanted to eat more than one meal this week, I opted for the more common poultry here, chicken. I found a nice looking chicken at my local grocery store for just under 5 euros. It weighed about 3-4 lbs so it seemed enough meat to feed 6 people. So i brought my little chicken home and took him out of the wrapping the night before just to make sure he was A-OK. Well was I surprised when under his body was tucked the head and neck!!!! He still had feathers on him, the beak, and eyes open! I freaked out and called my roommate Steve in for advice, support, ahhh! Upon closer examination this bargain chicken also had his talons still on, giblets intact, and a few stray feathers...
I was ready to give it all up and buy a more expensive, gutted chicken. But Steve got brave or maybe just a little interested, and decided he would decapitate the chicken. Once the head came off, I thought, what the heck, and started digging int he body cavity to remove the giblets. About an hour later, Steve and I had successfully disemboweled our chicken and he looked ready to cook. It felt a little bit like high school dissections. We were trying to identify all the body parts...
Sorry for those with a weak stomach! The night before I also successfully made a pumpkin pie from scratch! I bought a small pumpkin from the market and stewed in on the stove. Then I removed the skin/shell and mashed it up. I had to do this with a fork because electric mixers are very expensive and hard to find here. I was able to find all the spices I needed here but I had to do some hunting to find the ground versions. Also I had to look a few of them up in the dictionary. The worst was that I had to make my own pie crust. The luxury of pre-made pie crusts does not exist here. I had to use butter instead of Crisco, as that also does not exist here,and I absentmindedly made the first crust on aluminum foil so clearly it stuck on. Fortunately they do have wax paper here so I rushed out to get that. Once my pie started cooking, the crust began to cave into the center so I had to do some emergency repair, but the end product was fabulously delicious!
So the big day arrived. I rushed home form work and began cooking at 5pm. Fortunately dinner time here is later, so we aimed to eat around 9pm. I skpyed my parents as I peeled potatoes and sweet potatoes which was nice. I almost didn't have enough pans to cook everything but I managed. At one point I was using every burner and the stove, which was too much for my poor little apartment and the fuse kept blowing! It happened like 5 times in a row! But it all worked out and I actually finished cooking before my guests arrived. The menu included a roast chicken, stove top stuffing my mom mailed from the US, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes (which were a HUGE hit by the way), cranberry sauce I bought from the only British food store in Barcelona, and pumpkin pie. Here's the table set, with the napkins and centerpiece my mom also mailed me!
Who attended the dinner? My roommates, Steve (English) and Daniel (Scottish) as well as Daniel's girlfriend Heather, who is also Scottish. Our Spanish friend Jose, from Pamplona came and I had one other American in attendance, my friend Sam from Houston, Texas.
I tried to take a "nice" picture of my roomates and I but they all came out kind of goofy, so here's the best of the lot! Left to right: me, Steve, Dani
I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving like I did! I missed being with my family a lot, and football, but it felt liek such an accomplishment to cook the meal all by myself and share Thanksgiving with some non-Americans and my friends here who are like my Barcelona family!
I was ready to give it all up and buy a more expensive, gutted chicken. But Steve got brave or maybe just a little interested, and decided he would decapitate the chicken. Once the head came off, I thought, what the heck, and started digging int he body cavity to remove the giblets. About an hour later, Steve and I had successfully disemboweled our chicken and he looked ready to cook. It felt a little bit like high school dissections. We were trying to identify all the body parts...
Sorry for those with a weak stomach! The night before I also successfully made a pumpkin pie from scratch! I bought a small pumpkin from the market and stewed in on the stove. Then I removed the skin/shell and mashed it up. I had to do this with a fork because electric mixers are very expensive and hard to find here. I was able to find all the spices I needed here but I had to do some hunting to find the ground versions. Also I had to look a few of them up in the dictionary. The worst was that I had to make my own pie crust. The luxury of pre-made pie crusts does not exist here. I had to use butter instead of Crisco, as that also does not exist here,and I absentmindedly made the first crust on aluminum foil so clearly it stuck on. Fortunately they do have wax paper here so I rushed out to get that. Once my pie started cooking, the crust began to cave into the center so I had to do some emergency repair, but the end product was fabulously delicious!
So the big day arrived. I rushed home form work and began cooking at 5pm. Fortunately dinner time here is later, so we aimed to eat around 9pm. I skpyed my parents as I peeled potatoes and sweet potatoes which was nice. I almost didn't have enough pans to cook everything but I managed. At one point I was using every burner and the stove, which was too much for my poor little apartment and the fuse kept blowing! It happened like 5 times in a row! But it all worked out and I actually finished cooking before my guests arrived. The menu included a roast chicken, stove top stuffing my mom mailed from the US, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes (which were a HUGE hit by the way), cranberry sauce I bought from the only British food store in Barcelona, and pumpkin pie. Here's the table set, with the napkins and centerpiece my mom also mailed me!
Who attended the dinner? My roommates, Steve (English) and Daniel (Scottish) as well as Daniel's girlfriend Heather, who is also Scottish. Our Spanish friend Jose, from Pamplona came and I had one other American in attendance, my friend Sam from Houston, Texas.
I tried to take a "nice" picture of my roomates and I but they all came out kind of goofy, so here's the best of the lot! Left to right: me, Steve, Dani
I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving like I did! I missed being with my family a lot, and football, but it felt liek such an accomplishment to cook the meal all by myself and share Thanksgiving with some non-Americans and my friends here who are like my Barcelona family!
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