It's An Ethnic Holiday Now

Real Thanksgiving- America. A place where there is a holiday that pretends to be celebrating thanks, but really is all about food. Well that holiday doesn't exist in England. So what in the world are 23 college students, many of whom have never had a Thanksgiving away from their family before, to do? 

Make Mexican food, of course!!

Those of us who had little to do, or at least a bad enough work ethic to pretend like there weren't better things we could be doing, spent much of the afternoon cooking. I made about 20 homemade tortillas that I turned into chips and four homemade salsas. The rest of the house joined in the cooking process later that night. And it was a glorious mess of people, food and smells as every single person in the house managed to walk into and out of the kitchen. When everything was finally prepared and ready to go we piled into the common room, buffet style and gorged ourselves. There was rice and beans, enchiladas, limeade, flan, guacamole and more. I definitely managed to stuff myself and I saw a few others lying around the floor later. 

Yet somehow I still managed to make Mexican Spiced Hot Chocolate (I'll give you my made up recipe if you're adventurous and want to try it) for us to drink while we watched the first Christmas movie of the season. 

Fake Thanksgiving- Friday afternoon I spent a good 9 hours at the other house of students, making 4 turkeys with no recipes. It was amazing. I cut off fat, took out the necks, buttered under their skin, etc. Everything. The ovens here are a lot smaller than those in the states, so the actual cooking of the turkeys was a little haphazard. But after a lot of basting and checking and rotating, they were done. 

Saturday: I helped make pounds of mashed potatoes before reheating the turkeys. Eventually everybody's food was done, appetizers were over and the feasting could begin. I had roped a few young men into carving the turkeys for me and a few more to set up another long buffet table. Did I mention there were about 75 people at this Thanksgiving? Or that I was in charge of seeing the whole thing put together? No? Oh, well in that case. . . 

Just kidding- everything went off without much of a hitch. We almost ran out of plates but thankfully someone managed to steal a few back out of people's rooms. All the food was absolutely amazing- sweet potatoes with marshmallows, ambrosia salad, and definitely the turkey. 

When all the dishes had been washed and put away by some very generous helpers we had an open mic night. It's amazing how one can sit in a room of people who are obviously really smart and witness their other brilliant talents first hand. After that it was time for another Christmas movie!

The holiday season has begun! We've already decorated our house with paper snowflakes and little fake tree. We even made red and green frosting to go on the homemade sugar cookies for the occasion. There was also apple cider and a rather short lived attempt at lining our windows with lights. The best part is probably our tree's angel, however: Blue construction paper cone body, green construction paper wings, foil arms holding a fishing rod with a foil star at the end, yellow paper head with foil halo. And a Tina Fey as Sarah Palin picture pasted onto it's face.