Here’s an extra post this week to make up for my lack of activity due to the whirlwind of festivities that went on the week before last. I was so mentally exhausted that I delayed blogging about it because I became tired after simply thinking about the craziness that happened.
Which blog topic could I possibly want to avoid? Well, dear reader, which American national holiday took place the week before last? Why, one of our most beloved holidays: Thanksgiving. *Gobble gobble*
This was also the week that gifted Berliners snow. I took a walk with my flatmate, P, on the first night the snow really stuck to the ground, which was last Tuesday. The picture was taken during our lovely walk in a square a few minutes’ walk from our flat.
Thanksgiving is a time for family, gluttony and sometimes, awkward family tension. It’s an incredibly busy time for all hostess-extraordinaires. Try to imagine my once-in-a-lifetime Thanksgiving situation for 2010: receiving 3 Thanksgiving invitations and hosting one of my own. Intrigued yet?
Let’s start with the three different invitations: one from Fulbright for the Tuesday of Turkey week, an acquaintance on actual Turkey Day and a good friend hosting her first one just around the corner on Saturday night. Phew! Because I’d like to not hurt anyone’s feelings or cause an uproar, I’ll just list my reactions of each Thanksgiving celebration in no particular order: one was just awful (very impersonal), one was decent but a bit disappointing still and another was absolutely wonderful.
(I made hand turkeys out of construction paper and taped them to our kitchen window.)
I was extremely excited to host my own Thanksgiving dinner for various reasons. The first reason: I wanted to do a sort of surprise birthday party for P (flatmate) because his birthday celebration earlier this month was not too great. I planned a little bit with our mutual friend, D, and we decided to do an American-themed party. Thanksgiving was the perfect mask to our master plan because it was definitely American and P would have never suspected that we’d be celebrating his birthday two weeks later. The second: I’m practicing cooking and being a good hostess this year i.e. practicing my Hausfrau (housewife) skills. The third: I’ve never hosted my own Thanksgiving dinner before.
I made pumpkin pie, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes. P made gravy and popped a chicken in the oven (you have to pre-order a turkey in Germany b/c Germans don’t really eat turkey). D made a yam dessert and stuffing. A friend of P’s brought over Glühwein. The best part was that one of P’s older brothers came to visit with his fiance, which meant that we had friends and family at the party (I couldn’t have planned it better!). It was my first time making pumpkin pie and green bean casserole but they both turned out OK, especially since I used cut pumpkin pieces that came in a sort of cocktail juice in a jar instead of canned pumpkin puree. I also substituted condensed cream of mushroom soup with a powder soup base and fried onions for the topping with sweet cookies (Butterkekse, if you’re curious) that I crushed with my fist on the kitchen table (the cookies were in the packaging when I crushed them with my fist, no worries). The food and atmosphere made up the perfect picture of what Thanksgiving should be (side-note: Thanksgiving isn’t the most important holiday for my family, even though my parents are unbelievably patriotic. That’s what happens when you’ve grown up in an Asian American family?). We ate at 9 PM and conversed well in to the night. We were all very full, satisfied and enjoyed the company immensely by the time 2 AM rolled around.
