Thursday,
November 27
Happy
Thanksgiving (and Hanukkah—this super holiday is called Thanksgivingkkuh)! My
friends and I all love Thanksgiving and couldn’t imagine not celebrating in
Prague. What started as a mere thought of turkey consumption evolved into a
giant feast with about 20 people. My friend Maddy and I organized the event and
have assigned dishes to everyone. They could either cook a dish or “sponsor”
one and have us cook it. As you may know, Thanksgiving is never celebrated in
Prague, Europe, or anywhere else in the world besides America. We invited some
friends from the Czech Republic and New Zealand to join in on the festivities
and they were all excited to experience Thanksgiving with REAL Americans!
Pre-feast:
Here are some road bumps that we’ve encountered while cooking the meal:
1)
The concept of premade stuffing doesn’t
exist here. DJ is spending the morning cutting/cubing bread for his 2 stuffing
dishes (classic and Italian).
2)
We all lack the proper cooking
supplies. Maddy must make a makeshift cooling rack to cook the turkey on. The
turkey is a hefty bird. We have named him Istanbul/Turk.
3)
None of our apartments have enough
plates or utensils for this many people, so James is responsible for finding
disposable utensils, plates, and cups so that we don’t have to eat with our
hands…off the floor. We also lack anything to serve the food in. I’m pretty
sure that Dani is bringing a salad in a pasta pot.
4)
No measuring cups. My Grandma’s
cranberry recipe (don’t even get me started on how hard it was to find raw
cranberries! I thought I was going to have to make some kind of Dingleberry sauce)
calls for ½ – ¾ cups of sugar. I just eyeballed it (even though I don’t even
know what ½ cup of sugar looks like). The sauce is a bit too sweet. Whatever.
We’ll live.
5)
My oven in general. You have to light
it with a match and then hold down the knob to make sure the flame sticks.
Also, there are no numbers on the knob to indicate what degree I’m setting it
for. Also, throw in the fact that everything is in Celcius here and that’s a
whole other variable. So the knob on my oven has a “0” (which presumably means
“off”), a dark circle (which must mean really hot), and a half-filled circle
(which must mean less hot). I’m attempting to cook a Spinach soufflé/casserole dish
that calls for 20 minutes at 175 degrees Celcius. I turned the knob to the
middle of hot and less hot. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Post-feast:
Wow. It was delicious. Such a perfect Thanksgiving meal with everyone that I
love here in Prague. We ate until we couldn’t move and then played charades.
Such an amazing night with friends. Off to Dresden and Berlin tomorrow!
The four stages of the turkey:
So proud of Maddy and myself for making this turkey!
So proud.
Chelsea and I preparing to bring our dishes over to the other girls' apartment
Mulled wine!! YUM. This should become more prevalent in the States
DJ's stuffing part 1
Turkey post carving
Grant streamed the Thanksgiving Day Parade live from his computer
Table #1
Latkes!!
Table #2
DJ's two versions of stuffing
Sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes.
Kelsey made veggies. We lacked a properly fitting top for the pan.
Photos by my friend Anna Jinks:
Czeching
out,
Grace
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