thanksgiving morning, i woke up at 9:30 to get back to work. mister benjamin had morning and evening practices like usual, and i figured it would be a good opportunity for me to maximize my time by doing a bulk of the work while i was home alone. turns out it was also convenient when i needed him to stop at the store again on his way home! ;)
went to town slicing the bread for the bruschetta - was going to finish it later so the bread wouldn't get soggy or stale or anything. moved on to prepping the celery for the stuffed celery, pending ben being able to find spanish olives in the store. otherwise, i'd use this celery for the stuffing and wouldn't need him to get the extra that i'd asked him to pick up. can you see my thoughts at work? emailed momma mac with a few more questions about the dinner, namely what to warm up first and what could wait until further along in the process.
that was when i found out that i'd messed up. apparently she doesn't pre-cook everything, she pre-prepares it, then cooks it the day of. my heart dropped when she sent that. big time. the last thing i wanted was for everything to wind up dried out and overcooked when it was time for dinner. i was convinced that i'd ruined my first thanksgiving. with her help, we sort of trouble-shot the situation, and i was feeling positive again. she even said, "lots of times, the leftovers are better than the first time," and that's pretty much what mine were going to wind up being: a whole ton of untouched leftovers! momma mac always makes things better.
by then, ben got home with the things i needed, and we were on to finishing the stuffing. he wanted to help, so i told him he could cut up a bowls-worth of onions and another of celery for the stuffing. this turned into a project, though, because i then had to show him the easiest way of quickly cutting onions, then explain the easiest way to dice up celery, etc. it would have probably been easier to bang it out myself, but the whole cooking-with-my-boyfriend thing was way too good to pass up, especially when he was so eager to help! there we were, sleeves rolled up in the kitchen, preparing our first thanksgiving meal: it couldn't have been more perfect.
by about 3, everything was set & ready to go, with the exception of being warm. i put the dishes on the table, and wondered to myself where the food that eboni was bringing was going to fit.
the boys left for their evening practice, and i got dressed and started getting out silverware, etc.
when he got back, he told me that "the team is coming." umm.... all of them?
sent benjamin to the store AGAIN for paper plates, cups, and so forth, since we had nowhere near enough to feed an entire team on! he was back just before people started coming, and it worked out just fine.
in the end, there were 12 of us... hardly the entire team, but all of the americans were there and it made me happy to be able to provide a thanksgiving meal and evening at least for the ones who would have typically celebrated it if they were home. it was breaking my heart to think of people sitting alone in their apartments on thanksgiving. did i mention it's my mom's favorite holiday? this is what she would have - and has - done, too, so it made it even better to put it into practice for our first thanksgiving.
eboni & kevin showed up with tons more food, and we had to scramble big time to fit everything on counters and in places where people could easily access it. we were running around like crazy trying to get things warmed up in our tiny single oven (i now fully understand the importance of double ovens) .. by the time we pulled out the final few dishes from the oven, the ones we'd put in first were back to room-temperature. there was really no way we were going to win, so we wound up telling people they'd probably have to microwave their plates. it is what it is, right?
towards the end of the night, i excused myself to skype back home to the family and friends that were at my parents house, and spent a bit catching up with people from there that i haven't seen in ages. while i was chatting, our guests in the other room (mister benjamin was with them.. i didn't just abandon them!) decided that it was time to head out. i'm pretty sure we ran out of alcohol, and that if we hadn't, they probably would have kept the party going.
went back into the kitchen to tidy up, and realized that all 12 people hadn't managed to eat even half of the food we had made! ended the night enjoying the company of my amazing boyfriend and a wonderful feeling of contentment after having successfully pulled off our first thanksgiving dinner!
leftovers for a week? yes, please!!
xox k
i had told benjamin that i wanted to wake up very early on wednesday morning to head out for the thanksgiving dinner groceries in order to be back in the kitchen cooking by about noon.
mind you, i had asked him on monday to let his team know that we were planning on doing thanksgiving and to try to find out how many people wanted to come join us, namely the americans, since i totally thought they should all have a place to celebrate the holiday! fast forward to wednesday, and i still had no idea if i was cooking for 6 or 20. i guess being italian, it wasn't a huge deal, since i was going to cook for an army regardless of how many people decided to come enjoy it with us.
on my part of the menu was stuffed celery, stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, my grandma's stuffing, mom's delmonico potatoes and swiss string beans, and baked stuffed chicken with a ricotta, parmesan, mushroom, and spinach stuffing. eboni had another entire feast planned to bring, as well. we did the groceries, came in way under budget for what we expected (yay) and headed home so i could get a move on.
first things first meant that i needed to open a bottle of wine. not sure how things get done in most homes, but in ours, it's with significant amounts of alcohol consumption ;) my christmas music was on blast, the oven was heating, the stove was fired up, and my glass was full... time to get busy!
i must have emailed my mom 20 times that day with questions about the recipes and how to do things best, what to substitute for things i couldn't find, and so forth. i also must have sent ben to the store about 3 more times after we got back from our initial shop. woops! at the end of the day, though, i felt great about what i'd done.
i went to sleep that night having already made the potatoes, string beans, mushrooms, and chicken, and then used the extra stuffing to make fried patties with a little bit of spicy thai sauce mixed in - kinda like a crab cake minus the crab. that left the bruschetta, celery, bread stuffing, and gravy for thanksgiving day.
no problemo, right?
xox k
friday morning i head over to eboni at about 10:30 to trek out for some groceries. she goes to a different grocery store than ben & i had been, and said that they had a lot more "american" options and selections, and i was really excited about some normal mustard (the stuff we had was terrible). irie stays with kevin, and eboni & i hop in the car and are on our way.
i guess there's not really too much excitement that i can write about regarding grocery shopping, but it was definitely a nice switch to not have my 5-year-old in tow. ben's hilarious when we're shopping. he's the kind of guy that thinks if we have three apple juices in the fridge we're low, and comes to put three more in the cart. i say no, ben, we have three at home, and he replies, "oh okay, so just two then?" you catch my drift. it's also torture trying to explain why we don't need five cadbury chocolate bars, four nestle crunches and a bag of sugar coated gummy things. i literally have him saving his change now, and he can count up his pennies and buy candy bars when he gets enough. seriously.
we grab some groceries, grab some coffee, and head home. i'm really excited because i bought a roast pan & a casserole dish to add to the massive collection of two pans that they gave us in our "furnished" kitchen, and i can't wait to cook something fun.
eb drops me back off and mister benjamin comes down to help lug the stuff up the stairs (i'm afraid of elevators). the plan is that eboni will come back around 6:30 ish to pick me up for the game. she drives... i'm too scared. cars here are on the wrong side of the road, the driver sits on the wrong side of the car, it's just a mess. so basically she has driving duty. it's probably better that way, too, because i wouldn't want the responsibility of irie's life while i was trying to figure out what side of the street oncoming traffic is coming from.
benboy & i relax for a bit, have a quick bit of food, and then he's off to the gym to get ready for the game. eboni comes a bit later, and we head that way, too. i asked irie where we're going and she gets all excited, "baball!" eboni says, "who are we going to watch?" i'm expecting "da da" but instead, we get "ogo, nen (ben), jb, da da..." i told you she knows everyones names! seriously this kid is a child protegy. she's not even two yet!!
the game starts off well, but it's not long before i'm not paying as much attention to it as i am to miss irie.
seriously, tell me she's not precious!!! eboni too.... ;)
i forget the rest of the game, really, but they won and then we went out to dinner on the committee at a yummy place that i have no idea the name of. whenever we've been taken out with the team, food has just continuously piled onto the table in massive quantities. i think they must pre-order what they want served and just say not to stop bringing it until they tell them to. that being said, i got a little nervous the first time because i'm such a picky eater (i don't eat animal products) and i didn't want to offend anyone by not really indulging in the foods they were so proudly offering us.
what i've found, though, is people are very, very accommodating to other people when it has to do with food. remember when i said they do what they want and don't care? i was kind of exaggerating anyway, but it definitely doesn't apply to eating. one of the guys on the committee picked up on the way i eat the first time we went out, by noticing what i was choosing from the table, and then it was game over. he ordered up another feast for me that was completely vegan-friendly, and it was unbelievable. this time when we were out, he again came up to me, "you're vegetarian, yes?" and then had the owner of the restaurant (i think) come by to tell me what they could make up for me. it's been amazing!
i am slowly starting to stray from my vegan diet, though. i've found that there are so many traditionally greek and cypriot dishes here that i really feel i should try in order to completely throw myself into their culture. i think that a lot of the reasons that i began the journey with the vegan diet were very much revolved around the american meat & dairy industry, and don't necessarily apply as strongly in other countries. i do still very much believe in the reasons why i began the vegan diet, and i'm not completely giving up on it, i'm just working on finding a balance, i think, between being true to what i feel and believe about the animals, as well as what i believe about learning other cultures and traditions. that being said, i still have zero intentions of eating meat. after seven years, i think it would take a lot more than a change in culture to get me to change my mind on that one.
speaking of food, eboni and i decided over our wine the other night that we are going to put on a big thanksgiving meal for pretty much anyone on the team that wants to come. i'm excited. kind of strange to think that this will be my first self-prepared thanksgiving dinner, rather than being home with my parents!
guess we're growing up...
xox k
