Thanksgiving 2011

I was rather sad to not be celebrating Thanksgiving with my family for the first time in my life. But my lovely new foreign friends were all on board with tackling a turkey and giving me a proper Thanksgiving meal.
 

Pie making!

The first step for me was to learn how to make apple pie from scratch, and I conveniently was able to use my colleagues as guinea pigs. We have a monthly bake off contest for team meetings. One person brings in a cake each month, and it was my turn in November. I requested special permission to bring in a pie as I had to be sure they wouldn't deduct points because it wasn't a cake! We score everyone's culinary contributions 1-10 and keep a running tally of who is winning the bake off. Happy to report that my pies brought me into 1st place! Competition isn't over yet... and I'm not sure we "win" anything other than bragging rights, but its all good fun nonetheless.

After having lasagne in our cafeteria for lunch on actual Thanksgiving, I was ready for the real deal by Friday evening for our planned meal.



Pick me!

 I came up with a menu with some help of my friend Rachel Ray (in case you don't know her, she's a chef famous for making things "easy peasey"!) as well as my grandmother's emails. We took a field trip to buy "Bob" the bird at Sainsbury's on Tuesday, along with all the other fixings we needed.

The meal was prepared at the house of a few co-workers, and thankfully one of them worked from home to do all the prep work during the day. It was a good thing, because our turkey was still slightly frozen in the morning when I popped by.  Not to worry though, all was well by cooking time.

  

We were a bit stressed, but we made it through the cooking process in a small kitchen, with tons of people milling around and Bob the bird was cooked perfectly in the end.

Ready to baste!

Bob came out perfect...

Frenchman vs. Turkey

The finished product

I celebrated my Thanksgiving with 5 Italians, 2 English, 3 Frenchmen, 1 Turkish girl + me the American. Everyone said what they were thankful for and of course, I was thankful I had made some fabulous new friends these past few months!

A success all around. Yet, I'm still thankful that my next turkey will be made by Grandma at Christmas in Chicago. I think once a year is enough for me!