On 11/26…
We had Thanksgiving! Wim was a great sport about the fact that I was away from my family for such a big American holiday. We decided we’d try to make some typical Thanksgiving dishes if we could find the right ingredients. My Aunt Gayle had sent me her recipe for Pumpkin Apple Butter (a spread for bread that actually doesn’t have butter in it) and since Wim and Jan are vegetarians we decided we’d also make sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. It’s a good thing we treated ourselves to sleeping in a little (as well as another Nocciolato at the coffee shop/bookstore) because the rest of the day was a frenzy of shopping and cooking.
Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t normally like cooking but I was determined to give Wim a taste of what our big holiday is all about so I threw myself into it. We hit a few snags at the grocery store…the “French’s Fried Onions” we usually use at home for green bean casserole are called “Baked Onions” there. Also, canned pumpkin isn’t something they keep in stock, but thankfully the organic store had a couple of jars of pumpkin puree that was pretty much the same thing (though a whopping 3,6€ for about 8 oz). We had just about everything we needed when I about had a coronary in the soup aisle. I couldn’t find any cream of mushroom soup! How would we have green bean casserole without it? And they didn’t even have the next best thing, cream of chicken (though that would hardly be vegetarian). All they had was Cream of Asparagus. Uck. We finally found some (whew!) and also managed to grab the only 4 sweet potatoes in all of Leuven.
Back in the kitchen we set to
work with the recipes we grabbed offline as well as the one from Aunt Gayle. Thankfully she was smart enough to give us the breakdown of the spices that make up “pumpkin spice” so we were able to create it ourselves (ginger, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg). I’d never toasted pecans before so that was interesting (but worked out just fine). We also had a snag with the cranberry sauce but it’s not worth mentioning, though I will say that I’m sure Wim and Jan will be eating cranberries for about the next month. Wim had invited his friend Karen to join us and she arrived around 6pm. Dinner wasn’t done until 7 owing to the long simmer time of that pumpkin apple butter. Karen washed dishes while we finished cooking and we all sat down to eat right at 7. Oh and Wim also made a bread that had pumpkin seeds in it. Not the same as “pumpkin bread” but it was a perfect compliment to the pumpkin apple butter.
Over dinner we talked about what Thanksgiving and holidays are like in the U.S. They all couldn’t believe how much more food we usually have out at our meal at home when I told them what other dishes we would usually have: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, “party potatoes”, corn, possibly a carrot and cauliflower casserole, deviled eggs, canned cranberry sauce (gotta love the can marks!), pumpkin bread, pumpkin torte or pumpkin pie or pecan pie (or maybe all three). I was almost embarrassed to admit that most of the time we even have pre-dinner snacks as well! They also shared what Christmas and New Year’s are usually like for them. After the first wave of food, we ate in spurts, all of us enjoying it so much that we wanted to have seconds yet realizing even those 4 small dishes were enough to fill us up. Eventually in true American style we all admitted to being stuffed. Between the great food, the good wine and the excellent company it was a truly nice way to spend a Thanksgiving away from family. I was very grateful that I wasn’t alone in Gozo. Karen couldn’t stay all night, having to catch a bus back home. But after she left, Wim, Jan and I moved to their living room area and kept the “party” going by talking and watching clips of funny stuff on youtube they wanted me to see. They finally understood why we normally don’t do much of anything after we eat because we’re so full!
The best part of Thanksgiving was when I got a call from my family towards the end of the evening. It was so heartwarming having the phone pass around between my dad, sister, nephew and brother-in-law. I think my favorite part was listening to Logan count to 30 in Spanish. *sigh* I can’t wait to see him when I get home.
We had Thanksgiving! Wim was a great sport about the fact that I was away from my family for such a big American holiday. We decided we’d try to make some typical Thanksgiving dishes if we could find the right ingredients. My Aunt Gayle had sent me her recipe for Pumpkin Apple Butter (a spread for bread that actually doesn’t have butter in it) and since Wim and Jan are vegetarians we decided we’d also make sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. It’s a good thing we treated ourselves to sleeping in a little (as well as another Nocciolato at the coffee shop/bookstore) because the rest of the day was a frenzy of shopping and cooking.
Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t normally like cooking but I was determined to give Wim a taste of what our big holiday is all about so I threw myself into it. We hit a few snags at the grocery store…the “French’s Fried Onions” we usually use at home for green bean casserole are called “Baked Onions” there. Also, canned pumpkin isn’t something they keep in stock, but thankfully the organic store had a couple of jars of pumpkin puree that was pretty much the same thing (though a whopping 3,6€ for about 8 oz). We had just about everything we needed when I about had a coronary in the soup aisle. I couldn’t find any cream of mushroom soup! How would we have green bean casserole without it? And they didn’t even have the next best thing, cream of chicken (though that would hardly be vegetarian). All they had was Cream of Asparagus. Uck. We finally found some (whew!) and also managed to grab the only 4 sweet potatoes in all of Leuven.
Back in the kitchen we set to
work with the recipes we grabbed offline as well as the one from Aunt Gayle. Thankfully she was smart enough to give us the breakdown of the spices that make up “pumpkin spice” so we were able to create it ourselves (ginger, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg). I’d never toasted pecans before so that was interesting (but worked out just fine). We also had a snag with the cranberry sauce but it’s not worth mentioning, though I will say that I’m sure Wim and Jan will be eating cranberries for about the next month. Wim had invited his friend Karen to join us and she arrived around 6pm. Dinner wasn’t done until 7 owing to the long simmer time of that pumpkin apple butter. Karen washed dishes while we finished cooking and we all sat down to eat right at 7. Oh and Wim also made a bread that had pumpkin seeds in it. Not the same as “pumpkin bread” but it was a perfect compliment to the pumpkin apple butter.Over dinner we talked about what Thanksgiving and holidays are like in the U.S. They all couldn’t believe how much more food we usually have out at our meal at home when I told them what other dishes we would usually have: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, “party potatoes”, corn, possibly a carrot and cauliflower casserole, deviled eggs, canned cranberry sauce (gotta love the can marks!), pumpkin bread, pumpkin torte or pumpkin pie or pecan pie (or maybe all three). I was almost embarrassed to admit that most of the time we even have pre-dinner snacks as well! They also shared what Christmas and New Year’s are usually like for them. After the first wave of food, we ate in spurts, all of us enjoying it so much that we wanted to have seconds yet realizing even those 4 small dishes were enough to fill us up. Eventually in true American style we all admitted to being stuffed. Between the great food, the good wine and the excellent company it was a truly nice way to spend a Thanksgiving away from family. I was very grateful that I wasn’t alone in Gozo. Karen couldn’t stay all night, having to catch a bus back home. But after she left, Wim, Jan and I moved to their living room area and kept the “party” going by talking and watching clips of funny stuff on youtube they wanted me to see. They finally understood why we normally don’t do much of anything after we eat because we’re so full!
The best part of Thanksgiving was when I got a call from my family towards the end of the evening. It was so heartwarming having the phone pass around between my dad, sister, nephew and brother-in-law. I think my favorite part was listening to Logan count to 30 in Spanish. *sigh* I can’t wait to see him when I get home.
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