Thanksgiving in Germany (November 23, 2006)
Complete Set of Photos
Most of the American students (there's only about 20 of us in this year's batch of foreign kids) gathered at James' (Ohio) apartment, which is about 20 yards from my apartment. There were about 12 Americans that showed up, plus a Canadian guy, a Spanish guy, an Australian girl, a girl from Finland, a few Swedish girls, and a Swedish guy. We had to borrow a table from another apartment to fit everyone! 
Everyone enjoyed it, because for just about all of the Americans, this was the first Thanksgiving we've ever had away from home and family. We had this dinner potluck style, with everyone bringing a dish to pass. James and DJ (Connecticut) made the turkey (yes, they did find a real turkey!), Eric (Minnesota) brought corn and something else, we had salads, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, ice cream, rolls, and just about everyone who came brought at least one bottle of wine, so we had plenty of that!
To top it off, Isaac (Texas) and I made pumpkin pie on Wednesday night. Now, this is a typical American dish so it's essentially unheard of over here. You can't buy pumpkin in the store. So, what we had to do was obtain a pumpkin and make the pie from scratch!
Isaac and I cut up this thick jack-o-lantern pumpkin (not a real pie pumpkin) and baked it to soften it up. Then, we mashed the flesh together and whipped with the eggs, sugar, and spices for the filling. The crust we even had to make ourselves, because for whatever reason you can't buy a premade pie crust in this country! To make things even more difficult, the recipe was in non-Metric units (cups, teaspoons, etc). Of course we're not going to find those measuring cups here! We didn't even have metric ones, so what we had to do was look up conversions to milliliters and then use a clean salsa jar that was labeled as 310ml! We poured as much flour as we though necessary into the jar, and then used that to measure!
For the crust, we didn't have a rolling pin to flatten the dough, so we had to use a cylindrical cocktail glass to do it! It was an adventure, but the pie turned out OK. We had enough pumpkin for two pies and a dozen pumpkin cupcakes, which we ate that night by ourselves with our German roommates! It was actually good and even tasted like the real thing, but ours was a light orange color and was a little stringier, because we didn't use the optimal kind of pumpkin. It was declared a success by the others at the dinner!
While we were setting up for the dinner with James, we tested the turkey and found that it was not fully cooked yet! It still had another hour or so to go. By this time, the other guests had started to show up, so the turkey went back in the oven for another hour and we finished off the salads while we waited. Finally, the turkey was done, so we finished that off as well! Unfortunately, we were unable to get American football on TV or the internet, so we couldn't veg out on the couch afterwards! I went back to my room and looked up the scores on the internet, so I guess that has to do!
Complete Set of Photos
Most of the American students (there's only about 20 of us in this year's batch of foreign kids) gathered at James' (Ohio) apartment, which is about 20 yards from my apartment. There were about 12 Americans that showed up, plus a Canadian guy, a Spanish guy, an Australian girl, a girl from Finland, a few Swedish girls, and a Swedish guy. We had to borrow a table from another apartment to fit everyone! 
Everyone enjoyed it, because for just about all of the Americans, this was the first Thanksgiving we've ever had away from home and family. We had this dinner potluck style, with everyone bringing a dish to pass. James and DJ (Connecticut) made the turkey (yes, they did find a real turkey!), Eric (Minnesota) brought corn and something else, we had salads, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, ice cream, rolls, and just about everyone who came brought at least one bottle of wine, so we had plenty of that!
To top it off, Isaac (Texas) and I made pumpkin pie on Wednesday night. Now, this is a typical American dish so it's essentially unheard of over here. You can't buy pumpkin in the store. So, what we had to do was obtain a pumpkin and make the pie from scratch!
Isaac and I cut up this thick jack-o-lantern pumpkin (not a real pie pumpkin) and baked it to soften it up. Then, we mashed the flesh together and whipped with the eggs, sugar, and spices for the filling. The crust we even had to make ourselves, because for whatever reason you can't buy a premade pie crust in this country! To make things even more difficult, the recipe was in non-Metric units (cups, teaspoons, etc). Of course we're not going to find those measuring cups here! We didn't even have metric ones, so what we had to do was look up conversions to milliliters and then use a clean salsa jar that was labeled as 310ml! We poured as much flour as we though necessary into the jar, and then used that to measure!
For the crust, we didn't have a rolling pin to flatten the dough, so we had to use a cylindrical cocktail glass to do it! It was an adventure, but the pie turned out OK. We had enough pumpkin for two pies and a dozen pumpkin cupcakes, which we ate that night by ourselves with our German roommates! It was actually good and even tasted like the real thing, but ours was a light orange color and was a little stringier, because we didn't use the optimal kind of pumpkin. It was declared a success by the others at the dinner!
While we were setting up for the dinner with James, we tested the turkey and found that it was not fully cooked yet! It still had another hour or so to go. By this time, the other guests had started to show up, so the turkey went back in the oven for another hour and we finished off the salads while we waited. Finally, the turkey was done, so we finished that off as well! Unfortunately, we were unable to get American football on TV or the internet, so we couldn't veg out on the couch afterwards! I went back to my room and looked up the scores on the internet, so I guess that has to do!
posted by Thomas Waltz at 3:38 PM
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