A Traditional-ish American Thanksgiving!

25 Nov 2011

Given that most of us (Americans in Alicante) had to work yesterday, we decided to hold our Thanksgiving feast today.

I, unfortunately, had to work and so I didn't get to help with many of the Thanksgiving meal preparations.

We only had a few mishaps/complications.

The first of which was the oven--or lack of ovens.

As anyone who has ever cooked for Thanksgiving knows, there are always too many things that you want to cook at the same time. So we had to divide and conquer. We ended up using three different ovens in three different apartments.

Next, we had to figure out whose ovens to use for what. Spanish ovens can be... kind of finicky. Not everyone had an oven that could cook from the top and the bottom--so we had to make sure that the chickens went to the ovens that did.

Which brings me to the third complication--gas ovens. One of my American friends has a gas oven that you have to light with a lighter. Turn on the gas. Stick your hand with the lighter in the oven. Wait to see if it lights? Sounds kind of scary, right? We also didn't know how to use it and where to put the lighter--so it was a little tense as we waited to see if we were going to have to take someone to the hospital with serious burns.

Then, there was the issue of the turkey. You can't really buy a whole turkey here in Spain. Not to mention that none of us have ever cooked one. So we decided to buy and stuff a few chickens. Nobody really likes turkey anyway...

In spite of all these issues (and some others that I refrained from writing about), we were able to put together a pretty traditional Thanksgiving spread--with a few Spanish improvements. :)

All in all, we had a salad, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes (with gravy), chicken, sweet potato pie, apple pie, and brownies.

In addition to the Americans in attendance, we also had some Thanksgiving newbies from four different countries! We had a German, a Spaniard, a French girl, and a few Italians.

It was fun to share the moment with them and explain to them all of our traditions!

We also spent some time talking about language stereotypes. Someone shared this video with Catherine Tate "translating." In turn, we shared the famous "One Semester of Spanish-Love Song" and "Qué hora es?." Even if you don't know Spanish, you should be able to find the humor in these clips.