We seriously planned for weeks. We were so excited for this! On Tuesday, Hil, Steph, Tim and I went to the huge supermarket on the other side of the city to buy everything we needed. Wednesday evening, we went to pick up the rest of the items missing, along with the turkey we ordered. Buuut for whatever reason, they had no turkey... so. Paolo came to the rescue and showed up at the store in literally less than two minutes. We tried a couple other places with no luck, then went to my host mom's office. From there, Paolo and her began call all over the city on a hunt for a massive and rare (to these parts) bird... at 8:30 pm... to be served the next day. By the miracle of Thanksgiving, my host mom found a 7.2 kilo (almost 16 pounds) turkey just chillin' in one of the local supermarkets. When we went to pick it up the guy in the meat section actually muttered "American..." after I asked for it... Haha. Dang. And the ladies at the check out were straight floored because they had never seen a bird that big, and even asked for a picture with it. Only after the entire staff got a chance to come see our monster of a meal were we allowed to leave.
Soo. Thursday morning (after Skyping my mom [and Josh and Linds] for last-minute instructions), Hil, Steph and Tim came over and the day began!... right after we made pancakes (YES! Finally made some use out of Canadian Hilary and the maple syrup she's been carrying around in her purse!). I got into my extreme apple pie makin' mode-- yeah, watch out-- for most of the morning while Steph worked on stuffing and Hil and Tim peeled, peeled, peeled apples, potatoes and carrots to their hearts' desires. In the afternoon, Tim brought out Berlusconi the Turkey and the washing process began... which was pretty much hilarious to watch. Then 
we did all the cool slathering in butter and stuffing with veggies and popped him in the oven!! Around 5, Gianluca and Paolo joined us (and restocked our butter supply) and took over Devilled Eggs while we worked on the rest-- homemade apple cider, mom's brown sugar carrots, gravy, mashed potatoes, etc-- and Tim decorated... haha. By 8:30, everyone was here and the turkey was finished-- and PERFECT! My host dad took out his man-scissors and kind of mutilated the turkey (sorry, Tim... he was really excited to do it... He watched "How To Carve a Turkey" on YouTube on repeat all afternoon) and then it was dinner time!!!
We had a huge, long table with 21 people!! Mine, Hil's, Steph's and Tim's host families, Paolo, Gianluca, Giorgio, Miriam and her mom, Maria and Hilary's counselor! Before eating, they made Stephanie make a little speech about the history of Thanksgiving, 'cause they had no idea what we were celebrating. Throughout the meal I had to go around explaining how to eat-- it's all one course (that was a difficult concept), carrot juice tastes great with turkey... along with gravy, mashed potatoes and the "fruit gel" (cranberry sauce). It was so fun to watch them taking tiny portions of everything, especially the
weirder looking things, like Steph's delicious homemade stuffing, but they totally loved everything, and we even heard comments like "Let's do Thanksgiving more often! Once a year isn't enough!" We gave the wishbone to my host parents since they let us use their house, and it was cool to see them all excited about it-- until Anna won, then Salvatore got a little less excited. After dinner we brought down the three lattice-work apple pies which was a totally new concept for them, along with everything else we served, but they were all either really good liars or they legitametly enjoyed it. We were totally pleased with the outcome. Everything was perfect. :]My family didn't finish cleaning until past one in the morning, so I didn't go to school Friday (along with Paolo, Gianluca, Giorgio and Miriam ahaha). For lunch yesterday we had leftovers for the first time since I've been here, and it was cool to see my host parents still eating turkey even when they could have made something else, so they must have actually liked it! Mission accomplished.
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well :]
Uhm. Three days until Germany and BERYL!!!! :D
No comments:
Post a Comment