Happy Thanksgiving to All!

I post this message on the return from my large Thanksgiving meal where I'm still stuck in a food coma.



So I did celebrate Thanksgiving this year even though I was away from home. It started about a month earlier when I happened to mention Thanksgiving during my small group. This lead to me have to explain several times over the course of several weeks what Thanksgiving is, why Americans celebrate it, what traditions we have it, etc.

As the weeks went on, they all seemed rather enthusiastic to have Thanksgiving and by last week they decided that they definitely wanted to celebrate it. I went home and had to start the Facebook planning. I made a very large list of possible things that could be brought to a Thanksgiving feast and then let the members of my small group just pick something to bring. I myself signed up for pumpkin pie and my home family recipe of broccoli casserole.

Let me make a note of the interesting times I had with baking in the UK.

I went online to find the recipes for the pie crust, pumpkin and the basics of the casserole. I found them easily enough. I had also found a store that sells cans of Libby's Pumpkin (an amazing little store that I love and wish to shop in more as I think I saw regular lasagna noodles, not the sheets that you just through in a dish and bake with the rest of the ingredients) and at a good price. I then moved on to finding the rest of the ingredients to bake with.

In Sainsbury's (which is a very large store similar to Walmart but not quite like it) there is no baking section. This isn't just this store, other stores are very similar to this set-up. To find the flour I needed, I had to find it by the bread. There is a separate section for sugar, and another place for spices. It was by random chance that I was even able to find evaporated milk (it was even Carnation!). I also had to purchase a pie plate (was known as a flan dish here but ah well it looks exactly the same) and I bought a square glass dish for the casserole (although I could have just as easily put it in my round dish, but a rectangular dish is nice to have to) and a liquid measuring cup (in mL!!).

I brought my ingredients home before realizing that I needed vegetable shortening for the crust (a.k.a. the Crisco part) and had to wander back to the store to find it next to the butter (what? Where else would you look for it?).

Upon finally having all of the necessary ingredients I started putting together my pie. On the crust, I needed a 1.5 cups of flour which meant I had to look up the number of ounces to a cup (it's approx. 8 in case you need to know) and using my liquid measuring cup, measure out my flour. I had to do this with most everything I had. Ounces of cheese and broccoli were converted to grams, 1/2 pint of evaporated milk was converted to mL (which I found out after measuring and adding it to the filling that pints was already marked on my cup).

Without ice cubes (I don't even have a tray for them) I filled my cup of with water and stuck it in the freezer until I needed to add it to my four mixture. I substituted one of my cups for a rolling pin to roll out the dough (and I ate the leftover bits :) my favorite part). And I converted the temperature of the oven to Celsius. It still took about an hour for it bake and I was nervous that it didn't come out right. As I pulled it out of the oven, my flatmates practically started drooling over it so I stuck it in the fridge to be out of sight (however my flat smelled of pumpkin pie last night).

I decided that I would wait until closer to the dinner to make the casserole since I would just need to throw the ingredients together and set it in the oven. However, when it was about time for me to start, I went out to my kitchen and realized that the Sciennes Thanksgiving was about to start in my flat kitchen (I don't really have a common room, that's about the closet that it comes). This led to a quick phone call and moving my things next door to my small group leader's flat, but all things worked out. The problem was that it was a little overcooked because I was running up and down the stairs looking for the classmates that I invited along.

I ate way too much food and had a lot of complements and queries on the pumpkin pie (which it seemed many people enjoyed).

I'd just like to throw this out here: The decision of the British people was that it was a great idea to have a very large meal in the middle of November. When this was mentioned, I smirked and commented that it came every year. I can foresee doing this again in the future (as I have a few more years here, I don't mind).

Well, I'm still in my food coma. I'm listening to some Korean version of the Backstreet Boys that makes me laugh to keep myself awake while I await to see if my family will ever log online today to talk to me. When this stops being amusing I'm going to switch to Batthumb and quote every single line!!!

"Commissioner! It was horrible! The took everything! Bags over their heads!" "Now, Now. Are there any women there?" "S-Sure. Most of the tellers." "I'll be right there."

And to all a good night! (Unless you're doing Black Friday shopping, to which I say that you are indeed mad!)