My reply was not very encouraging.
To be honest I was feeling a rush of anxiety at the thought of being responsible for cooking Thanksgiving dinner. From the time I was able I have always helped my mother prepare for the big day. I helped peel and slice apples or mix the pumpkin filling for pies. I mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. I made cookies with my little sisters. I baked some pumpkin, cranberry or zucchini bread. In reality though, I was never the one that was slaving in the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning preparing a turkey and stuffing and prepping everything else while decorating the house and cleaning the house and organizing guests and taking care of the family.
Nevertheless the next day I was informed that the family was coming over the following week and I must plan. That was it. I was trapped. I blanched at this and immediately began to run lists through my mind of what would need to be done. I was overwhelmed and feeling a little insecure. My German family had never experienced Thanksgiving so it was up to me to show them how wonderful it is. At first this responsibility was drowning me and I wanted to renege on our invitation. But then I blabbered away during lunch with my mother-in-law and in her no-nonsense way she promptly told me that I could do this and that there was no reason to worry. "Who cares, Deanna, if it is not perfect! You can do this...why worry!" It was then that I realized that I was capable. Fear tends to blind me, but the truth set me free.
I began brainstorming and researching and organizing--as I am apt to do--everything in a word document with sections and subsections and metric conversions. I made lists for shopping and remade lists for shopping several times in my mind before I was finally able to commit a list to paper. The more I informed myself the more prepared I felt. Soon I was excited. I was forced to make many things from scratch: The stuffing, cranberry sauce, and the pumpkin puree for pie. You won't find a can of pumpkin in this country....
We celebrated on Friday rather than Thursday because my father-in-law was travelling and would not have been home until late Thursday night. I spent Thursday afternoon baking and pureeing pumpkin, peeling and slicing apples, slicing and dry-baking bread, chopping and cooking vegetables, making pie filling, making cranberry sauce, and singing Christmas music. Friday I made the mashed potatoes, corn and of course the Turkey. Our food was so wholesome and fresh. I even used fresh herbs in the stuffing--makes a huge difference! Our turkey was rubbed with butter, salt and pepper, filled with apples and onions, and basted with white wine, drippings, and chicken broth and cooked with a convection oven with a high-heat roasting technique. First 20 minutes to a half hour roasted at 500 degrees F, then the next 1-1.5 hours roasted at 350. It came out amazing! I am not sure I ever had a juicier bird!
My first Thanksgiving was wonderful and hard. However, I really enjoyed the challenge. I have felt overwhelmed with gratitude for my family, my home, my husband, and my life the past few weeks. God has truly blessed me with so much more than I deserve! This week we started a new chapter in my German course. The title is "Wunschlos glücklich?" The chapter was about things you might wish for or want that you do not have. We learned how to say I wish for/desire this or that or those.... The title was meant to be rhetorical, because, as my teacher said, people are rarely content with what they have and rarely have everything they could desire. Maybe they could be, maybe not. However, today I can say that I am "wunschlos glücklich". I am perfectly happy!
Photos from our bounty. Taken by Kay Rogge
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6 comments:
Gosh, Dee, your photos are incredible...I started to drool looking at the them, which I did first, before reading the text. But then I came back and read your blog and started blinking away a few tears. What an amazing job you did! And the way you overcame your own personal obstacles, talking yourself through it and allowing your m-i-l to give you permission for the confidence you already had was so inspiring and wonderful to read. I'm so proud of you on so many levels - Happy Thanksgiving indeed! Love you, Pam
Deanna, I could not stand not having Thanksgiving dinner the first year I was there. Some American friends and I improvised a dinner ( the first time I ever cooked a turkey!) invited a few friends and loved it. After that, I had to do one every year. I had the hardest time finding even fresh edible pumpkin. Eventually someone mentioned that pumpkin is very common in West Indian cuisine, so I found a Caribbean market that had some, I steamed it and mashed it to make pumpkin pie! It was delicious. I think the concept of Thanksgiving is so important, that is one tradition american's should never give up when relocating. Congratulations.
Thanks Gwen. I try to be thankful all the time, but Thanksgiving is just special. I am so glad we celebrated. It was a wonderful day! Did you live in Germany?
Haha, no, I meant to say in England, not there.
Ahhh, I was wondering. Pumpkins are not that hard to find here ;)
They have pumpkins, but they are the kind mostly bred for decoration, not very tasty. The Caribbean pumpkin was fabulous.
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