Happy Thanksgiving America! My First Turkey Day as Host Complete With Holiday Crisis

Greetings from the other side of the pond. I certainly hope everyone is enjoying time with their family and loved ones. I never realized how much I loved Thanksgiving until I wasn’t really able to celebrate it. I love having the day off and getting to see family and frequently in my family’s case, travel somewhere. I love having a ton of food to eat and I love that it is all homemade. I love that in the middle of the night you can go find the turkey carcass and nibble off a midnight snack. I love the turkey, stuffing and mashed potato breakfast my family and I usually indulge in. I love laying around watching football while the food cooks and most importantly I love pumpkin pie. This probably explains why I practically cried when I received a can of pumpkin, pie crust, and seasoning in my most recent box from my mom. There is “pumpkin” in Namibia but it’s essentially squash, and I didn’t want to attempt and probably mess it up. Also given the fact that I have been making mashed potatoes with a fork (Nothing is standing between me and mashed potatoes Megan O’Connor) I could only imagine how an attempt at homemade pumpkin pie would end.

            It’s funny because when people ask me to make them American food my mind kinda goes blank. What is American food? I remember the first week we had Amandine in the Twp. Coming all the way from Belgium ready to experience American culture for the next year and her first week is full of pizza, Thai food, Mexican, spaghetti, Chinese food, and maybe burgers one night. We realized that we had given her a taste of the rest of the world’s food “Made in America” but not really “American” food. Even us volunteers hosted an American cultural food day and had an Asian inspired, Mexican/Southwestern inspired, and Italian inspired table. If you think about it, the food we (or at least my family, friends, and I) eat every day is always inspired by a different culture that is present in the melting pot that is the US.  I would personally consider “traditional” food is what we eat on holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter food. Stuff you don’t eat everyday and you don’t really know how to prepare until you are an adult yourself.

            For example, if you handed me a ham, I would have no idea what to do with it. At all. I am not sure if I have told this story but when I was living in Okahandja with my host family there my host mom comes home and tells me she has a surprise for me. I get really excited as she guides me into the kitchen where there is a giant bag. She reaches into the bag and says she stopped at the store after work in the capital and bought a turkey. She looks at me and says her family has never had a turkey before and since she had an American living with her she wanted to buy one to make me feel at home. I was touched and then she says “So you’re American, you know how to cook a turkey right?” Lol what? Um okay sure lets see here. 2 carrots, a few baby stalks of celery, mutton stock. I tried my best, it turned out pretty good but at the end of the day I think the turkey was actually an overpriced duck… oh well.

            Tonight, thanks to the wonderful Kelley Riley, and her expensive package, I have all the fixins for a pretty decent Thanksgiving (minus the bird – I’m just using chicken) and the traditional food that all the Namibians I have met are requesting. However now comes the moral decision to share or hoard it all for myself. Actually, I decided to share, now the task at hand is to cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner with 2 pots, and a baking sheet….

            It began with the baking of the pies. I have never actually made a pie and have only ever really witnesses my mother making cobblers in the summer and fall.  I was super excited for the pumpkin because I cannot stress enough how much I love it. However I should make a disclaimer that I am used to perfection when it comes to pumpkin and apple pies. Nearly every year we order our pies from the local Yates Cider Mill. They are delicious and even call us each year wondering if we would like to order again. Um yes we would. There was one slip up year however. We were eating our pies and something tasted off. At first no one wanted to say anything out of fear for shaming the Yates name, when someone finally spoke up though we all agreed that they were just having an off year when it came to their pumpkin pies. Then we got the call. The poor Yates people called every one that had ordered their pumpkin pies after Thanksgiving dinner to admit they had forgotten the sugar when making them. At this moment everyone let out a sigh of relief that it was just an honest mistake. However the memory was forever in our minds.

            I don’t know how I could have forgotten it. But when I was making my pies I was just so excited, I couldn’t contain myself. I even put it in two pie tins so that I could possibly hide one just for myself for the weekend. They cooked beautifully. They were perfect, I couldn’t wait to cut into them and actually I didn’t. A chef always had to taste their creations right? I cut myself a tiny piece unable to resist the temptation anymore and took a bite. Something didn’t taste right… Maybe it was because I was in the middle of nowhere Africa…but then that SHOULD make it taste good. And then it hit me. Ohmygawd I forgot the stupid sugar. I was so excited to use the goodies from America that I forgot to simply add that little bit of sugar. I was going to give pieces to all my neighbors, eat this for breakfast, and had people coming over in an hour. Holy crap what do I do? Text my mom of course.

            What I was advised to try and ultimately did was scoop out the filling, mix sugar and then rebake it. It ended up working pretty well  and my fellow teachers tried taking the whole extra one home. Not happening buddy, but boy was I thinking in my head that next year I will laugh about this. Thank goodness the rest instructions that I had to follow to complete dinner were “Just add water”

            In all the evening was very successful. I taught them each about Thanksgiving and attempted to explain Hanukah on the fly. There was stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy out of a box, Namibian chicken that was still bleeding a bit when it unthawed, some all American CocaCola, and we all shared what we were thankful for The Namibians each ate a plate and I almost had to roll them out the door. Amateur hour up in here, they served no competition to my Uncle Wook. I am now a happy camper with all my left overs and some delicious breakfast tomorrow morning.