The interesting thing about a British Thanksgiving Day is that there is no such thing and here in lies the interesting part about trying to celebrate an American holiday in a foreign country. Since there is no hype up for the big day, it came up on us quickly and it almost ended up being an ordinary day in the UK..."oh Thanksgiving is on Thursday, I almost forgot." As we all know, one of the biggest things about Thanksgiving is the traditional meal and I worked very hard to collect the recipes of all the traditional goodies - pumpkin pie with my great grandma Vera's pie crust recipe, Kevin's grandma Ras's stuffing recipe, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes/gravy, homemade rolls, Ocean Spray Cranberry's in a jar, and a large British "chicken." Kevin took the day off, yes, he actually had to use a vacation day because we are to follow our host country's vacation schedule. I made some homemade cinnamon rolls the night before so we started out the day with some yummie sweets. To get our minds off being away from family and as we patiently waited to call family back home, we went for a walk out in the country on a beautiful cool,wet fall day. Around 11:30 AM our time (5:30 AM Central) we called up my mom and dad...got my mom to shoot right out of bed and she about scared Addison with the wild bed head hair. A few hours later we visited with Kevin's folks and I kept quizzing Sally about how to perfect the stuffing recipe - it was a crockpot recipe and I don't have one so it posed some tweaking. Most of the afternoon I spent prepping and preparing our evening meal...the pumpkin pie ended up being a team effort.
I was missing some ingredients so my wonderful neighbor, Min, ran to the store for me, then Kevin had to help me wrap the edges with foil and put it in our oven, and of course everyone had a piece to eat. Also since there is no Cool Whip in the blessed country I had to make my own sweetened whipping cream (actually it tastes a lot better than Cool Whip). Kevin told me it really started to feel like Thanksgiving once he could smell the stuffing cooking...me too. We got a special treat when we decided to Skype my mom and dad again in the afternoon, my Auntie Julie and Uncle Thom stopped and we got to see them as well. They had a hoot seeing Addison. Our friends/neighbors Danny, Min, Yi Xuen, and Yi Hong came over for dinner.
Since they are from Singapore, this was their first Thanksgiving and what a treat it was having them share a great American tradition. Our other British neighbors also brought us a bottle of wine since they knew we were celebrating the day. After dinner, Min and I ran off to our neighbors house for a Virgin Vie home party, Danny brought the kids home to bed and Kevin turned on Sky Sports and watched the NFL games that happened to be broadcasting. It was a great day, but bittersweet to be away from our extended family, but it was a great opportunity to start some new traditions with our "new family" over here.
The interesting thing about a British Thanksgiving Day is that there is no such thing and here in lies the interesting part about trying to celebrate an American holiday in a foreign country. Since there is no hype up for the big day, it came up on us quickly and it almost ended up being an ordinary day in the UK..."oh Thanksgiving is on Thursday, I almost forgot." As we all know, one of the biggest things about Thanksgiving is the traditional meal and I worked very hard to collect the recipes of all the traditional goodies - pumpkin pie with my great grandma Vera's pie crust recipe, Kevin's grandma Ras's stuffing recipe, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes/gravy, homemade rolls, Ocean Spray Cranberry's in a jar, and a large British "chicken." Kevin took the day off, yes, he actually had to use a vacation day because we are to follow our host country's vacation schedule. I made some homemade cinnamon rolls the night before so we started out the day with some yummie sweets. To get our minds off being away from family and as we patiently waited to call family back home, we went for a walk out in the country on a beautiful cool,wet fall day. Around 11:30 AM our time (5:30 AM Central) we called up my mom and dad...got my mom to shoot right out of bed and she about scared Addison with the wild bed head hair. A few hours later we visited with Kevin's folks and I kept quizzing Sally about how to perfect the stuffing recipe - it was a crockpot recipe and I don't have one so it posed some tweaking. Most of the afternoon I spent prepping and preparing our evening meal...the pumpkin pie ended up being a team effort. 
I was missing some ingredients so my wonderful neighbor, Min, ran to the store for me, then Kevin had to help me wrap the edges with foil and put it in our oven, and of course everyone had a piece to eat. Also since there is no Cool Whip in the blessed country I had to make my own sweetened whipping cream (actually it tastes a lot better than Cool Whip). Kevin told me it really started to feel like Thanksgiving once he could smell the stuffing cooking...me too. We got a special treat when we decided to Skype my mom and dad again in the afternoon, my Auntie Julie and Uncle Thom stopped and we got to see them as well. They had a hoot seeing Addison. Our friends/neighbors Danny, Min, Yi Xuen, and Yi Hong came over for dinner. 
Since they are from Singapore, this was their first Thanksgiving and what a treat it was having them share a great American tradition. Our other British neighbors also brought us a bottle of wine since they knew we were celebrating the day. After dinner, Min and I ran off to our neighbors house for a Virgin Vie home party, Danny brought the kids home to bed and Kevin turned on Sky Sports and watched the NFL games that happened to be broadcasting. It was a great day, but bittersweet to be away from our extended family, but it was a great opportunity to start some new traditions with our "new family" over here.
No comments:
Post a Comment