Our European Thanksgiving

I was pretty bummed about being so far away from home for one of my favorite holidays, since Thanksgiving is a purely American holiday. In years past I have spent weeks thinking about and preparing for this one meal. Since I have come to love cooking so much over the past 4 or 5 years I always look forward to the chance to go "all out" for the event.

One of my responsibilities now is to make lunch for everyone Monday through Thursday ever week. Since I would already be cooking on Thanksgiving anyway, I decided to make a little Thanksgiving meal for everyone. Since I am not in charge of the shopping I try and keep things as simple as I can or at least use mostly ingredients that can usually be found here in the restaurant. Luckily, most of the traditional Thanksgiving foods are made with things that they keep on hand. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get a turkey but Uli, who does the shopping, was able to find one albeit a small one.

So the line up was as follows. . .Turkey and turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, sausage and apple stuffing, green beans, peas and cranberry sauce, although cranberries are very hard to get here so it was actually made with preiselberry but I don't know the English equivalent. Everything turned out perfectly and was very delicious. It was a nice taste of home even if I couldn't go to the extent I usually would and even if I didn't get any pumpkin pie or sweet potatoes.

So, Thanksgiving was a success and I even tried to come up with a few things I was thankful for :)