Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Thanksgiving Part 1

This year my roommates and I decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner because we have one of the bigger apartments that can hold a lot of people. We initially invited twenty people, however over the last week the list has grown to almost forty people! Most of the people who have been added are people in the Fulbright group that we know but now we definitely do not have space for everyone. The problem is that we are all friends and we don’t know how to say no to someone. Currently the plan is to have a buffet and when someone comes they put their dish out and they can start eating whenever they want. There is no way everyone will be able to sit down at the same time so we will probably end up eating in shifts. One of our friends is bringing an extra folding table she has and we have asked those with folding chairs to bring them as well, however very few people have any.

Everyone is expected to bring at least one dish. We are cooking a turkey on Thursday which we had to preorder because the supermarkets do not normally carry them. When we went to order the turkey, the butcher told us they would kill the turkey on Wednesday and we could pick it up on Thursday. I don’t think I have ever had a turkey that is this fresh. However, we are all quite nervous about cooking it. Our oven only has numbers 1-10 with no temperatures listed. I have looked at other ovens in Spain and they have actual temperatures listed. Our oven is about thirty years old so there is no hope of finding a manual online to explain the numbers. Because we have no idea how hot anything is, I will try to find a meat thermometer in order to ensure we cook the bird enough, however because most apartments do not have ovens they can be hard to find.

In order to prepare our Thanksgiving feast, multiple trips to Taste of America (an American grocery store) have been necessary. They are the only place that sells cranberries, pumpkin pie filling, stove top stuffing, and brown sugar.
Tomorrow, (ie Thanksgiving Day), I will get off of work around 1 and go straight home. We will cook for the next six or seven hours and people will start arriving at our apartment around 8 pm and we will start eating around 8:30 pm. Wish us luck!

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