We have been planning this for a while. I have wanted to do a Thanksgiving dinner with my host family since I left as just kind of an American experience. I'm experiencing and living the Belgian culture. Why shouldn't I open the eyes of my host family to a little taste of the States? At least the delicious parts... And today, it happened.
Last night, Talia slept over my house. I did not have class yesterday due to teacher absence, and today was a day off for the whole school because it is celebrating then end of World War One for Belgium. And we have off tomorrow too :) So this morning, around 10 30, Benoit, being the wonderful host brother that he is, drove Talia and I over to Mikayla's to begin our day of preparation for the Thanksgiving feast.
We got to her house and chilled for a while, sharing videos we had "Stumbled Upon" and just chatting. We went down to lunch, ate lasagna and talked with Mikayla's host family. After that, the fun began. We had a whole menu to prepare, and not a whole lot of time to do it in. Our original menu consisted of:
Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Corn
Salad
Cranberry Sauce
Yams
Crescent Rolls
Gravy
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
We were pretty proud of our menu, and had everything all planned out so that we would be able to make it all. Until... We found out it's actually very difficult to find a turkey in Belgium. So instead, we had two chickens. That was probably the biggest disappointment of the whole experience for me. But there was nothing we could do about it, so we kept plugging away. And then we found out that we didn't have any corn, because garbonzo beans had accidentally been bought in place. So no corn. And my mom had put a couple cans of cranberry in the mail. You know, Ocean Spray cranberry in a can. The kind that keeps the shape of the can and you slice up? Yah, it's my favorite Thanksgiving food. But since it was a holiday, there was no post today. So I didn't get the package. So no cranberry. No crescent rolls either, so we settled for Bisquick biscuits, since I had some Bisquick from the English store in Waterloo.
So we started our cooking off with the stuffing and the pies. Talia went to work cutting up a baguette, and I began peeling apples. Which, out of the eight that I had, only one was a tart apple. But that's ok. Mikayla was getting the rest of the things together for the stuffing and they were making progress quickly. We were all working very hard and thing were going great. The stuffing was coming along and my pie was looking fantastic. We had originally had a little problem with oven space, but we quickly resolved that and found that it wasn't going to be necessary to go to Mikayla's host grandma's house to bake some things. So I put my pie in right away and since the stuffing was done, Mikayla went straight to the pumpkin mixture that she had made by hand from an actual pumpkin the night before, since pureed pumpkin in a can doesn't seem to exist here either. That pie came along quickly too, and pretty soon we had the apple pie out of the oven and the pumpkin one in.
Then it was chicken time. After a couple calls to Mikayla's mother via Skype, her and Talia figured out what they had to do to prepare the chickens. I stayed out of that whole mess because I have a problem with raw poultry and I can't handle the prospect of salmonella. Yes, I'm insane and yes, I know it. So I got going on the green bean casserole. Pretty soon that was good to go and we were swapping out yams for casserole and got the chickens in too. The yams got peeled and covered in brown sugar and butter, and I started making my own french fried onions, since those don't exist here either. Those got put on the casserole, and then the pumpkin pie went in the oven. Before we knew it, we had yams ready for the oven, chickens baking, two beautiful pies, and a green bean casserole. But there was still so much to do.
We continued to finish the yams, peel potatoes, chop vegetables for salad and mix up Bisquick. At some point in there, too, we had changed and made ourselves pretty for the occasion. Mikayla's host dad came in and checked the chicken for us, and when they were done, he carved them. We were carefully timing everything out for when we had to throw things in the oven to reheat, and when I had to make the mashed potatoes.
Around 7 30, our guests began to show up. But because this is Belgium, everyone had some champagne and snackage before the meal. We didn't end up eating until after eight. But we had a little disaster before that...
In an attempt to reheat the gravy that Mikayla had made, the flour in the gravy had somehow cooked and our gravy became this lumpy, disgusting substance. We tried everything to fix it, but nothing worked. We even scraped out some of the extra and had another batch, but that got screwed up in an attempt at reheating also. So we didn't have gravy at our Thanksgiving dinner either. But we couldn't worry about that too much. We took all of the food out to the beautifully set table, and sat down to eat. We explained everything, and all of our guests tried all of our food. And the verdict? They loved it! They really really enjoyed our meal, and so did we. The conversation was good, the ambiance was great, and the food was really delicious, even though it wasn't quite the traditional Thanksgiving dinner that we're used to in the States. The only difference was that they didn't completely stuff themselves and then flop down on the couch to undo the top button on their pants, though I probably could have if I wasn't worried about cultural differences...
We cleared away the plates and brought out the pies. And those were a huge hit!! I was pleasantly surprised to see how much everyone loved the pumpkin pie. It was a total success. After we were all finished eating and talking and laughing, Talia and Mikayla and I cleaned up, and then we took a few pictures, said our goodbyes, and now I'm here and it's almost 1am and I'm so exhausted I'm falling asleep at my computer.
I hope you enjoyed by Thanksgiving post, because I did!
What am I thankful for? This crazy experience in BELGIUM!!!
Love the design here :)
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