Turkey Day!!

The long awaited day had arrived. Food! Jon and I had decided it would be way more fun to have people over for Thanksgiving than to have tons and tons of food for just us. So, with the first of the Yorkshire snow falling to set the tone for the season, Thanksgiving was upon us. Jon invited four of his friends, and I four of mine. Not realizing how helpful it was to have school and work off to prepare all this food, we were a bit rushed finishing everything in between classes. The night before, I made Hello Dolly cookies (admittedly, with much more butter than I intended to, given the sketchy conversions we used from American to metric measurements), searched for a pie crust (with no success) and started the sweet potato dish. The next day during our mid morning break I cooked one of the “Turkey” roasts, started the dough rising for the rolls, searched again for a pie crust (again, no success. For a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, people were sure baking a lot of pies…) I arrived home in the evening after my classes after finally finding a pie crust, quickly threw together the pumpkin pie mix and precariously put it in the oven. That was a traumatic ordeal in itself, let me tell you. For some reason the pie mix made way more than it was supposed to, or the crust wasn’t as big as it should have been, because I didn’t use all the pie mix and the crust was still super full. I gently laid it in the oven, but our ghetto oven racks are such that they are slightly off balance and it takes something heavy in order to keep the racks in a level position. The pie was not heavy enough. As I eased my hand off the pie, the racks started to slowly tilt backwards, causing the pie mix to slide back as well. I grabbed the racks just before all the mix ran off the back of the crust and re-thought my strategy. I tried leaving the pie slightly off the rack towards the front to move the center of the rack’s gravity slightly, but then I couldn’t close the oven door. It was a difficult process, but at last I managed to get it in safely. The dumb oven ended up burning the top of the pie slightly, but everyone said it still tasted good. Where was I? Right. After I slid the pie in, I put the potatoes on the stove to start them boiling and threw together one recipe of stuffing. Pie came out, stuffing and one tray of rolls went in. I started working on the other stuffing recipe. People began arriving early. Panic! Jon was quite helpful. Swept the house, made the gravy, and helped me figure out what to do with all this food that was being produced in our limited amount of counter space. Zuzana arrived, bringing more bread, and I set her to work on the mashed potatoes. She was quite the masher. She got them almost as creamy by hand as a mixer would have. First stuffing came out of the oven, and a problem arrived. We had reached our capacity of mixing bowls (1) and casserole dishes (2) and we now had nothing with which to cook the second stuffing mix in. Jon helping with the assist, we spooned the cooked one onto a plate, put the second one into the baking dish and into the oven, and the first one back into the mixing bowl to serve in. Whew. Second tray of rolls accompanied the stuffing in the oven as I began setting out plates and a random assortment of cutlery. Kate arrived, bearing 4 cans of corn and instant mashed potatoes as a back-up. Corn cooking, I started working on the topping for the sweet potato dish. Liz arrived with pies, yum. Stuffing and rolls came out of the oven, second turkey went in. Hana and boyfriend arrived with a salad, Tom arrived with parsnips (yum!), Jess arrived with drinks, and Katie with ice cream for the pies. We were set! We had so much fun! Liz cut the “turkey”, Jon said the blessing, and we all dug in. We swapped stories from our two departments, and soon people were laughing so hard I was afraid I would have to give the Heimlich maneuver. We ate so much food. And then we ate more food. And then we had dessert J People raved about my mom’s sweet potato dish, called it “gorgeous”. Zuzana, who watched me pour the final dollop of butter on top was a little more reluctant than the others to go back for seconds, much as she loved it. People looked at our wedding albums, tried to help with our puzzle (though we didn’t give them much to work with as all that was left was sky), and even helped me thoroughly clean the kitchen, thankfully. What a good night! The house wasn’t quiet again until 10:30 that night, with leftovers scattered around the counter for Jon to enjoy while I’m gone (I leave for Cape Town South Africa at 2:00 AM tomorrow morning!!!).