Being a house full of Americans we decided that we had to have a real Thanksgiving celebration. The Brits, of course, do not celebrate Thanksgiving, but they do have their own Harvest celebration that was had back at the beginning of October (It’s very informal and you can kind of pick whichever Sunday you want to have it on) . So we put up a sign-up sheet to get a decent head count and determine who would bring what (gotta love potlucks). All of the Americans signed up, the rest of the students in the house, and also one of the Tutor’s families, some couples from the church, and our Finnish friend Samuli. Altogether we had about 30 people for our Thanksgiving feast. Once we realized it would be a large bunch, we had to make sure we had enough food. Everybody picked their dish to pass, and Mandy and I picked mashed potatoes and gravy. It seemed like it would be easy at the time, until we remembered that we had to peel potatoes for 30 people. Plus I had no idea as to how to make gravy. We ended up buying 22 pounds of potatoes, and we bought some cheap packets of gravy that were “just add water”. Some Thanksgiving purists decided that we had to have giblet gravy as well, so I let them deal with that.
We wanted to do the dinner on Thanksgiving, but with the wives working and the guys in classes all day it wouldn’t have worked out, so Friday it was. For Thursday festivities I hooked up my computer to the TV in the house and we watched the Packers/Lions game. The Lions looked sad as usual, even when they made a desperate attempt to come back in the end. Same old lions, same old Thanksgiving tradition.
On Friday we decided that Thanksgiving just isn’t Thanksgiving without a friendly game of touch (American) football. So the manly men went out to the park and played for a good 2+ hours while we let the 3 turkeys bake in the ovens. After the wives got home from work the kitchen was in a flurry until the dinner began at 8:00 p.m. We finished mashing and mixing about 2 minutes before the dinner was supposed to begin…good timing for hot mashed potatoes. We had the meal in the hall of the church because there was such a crowd. The spread looked amazing, and it tasted the same. We also had some live music and a message from Andrew Yeager concerning the 1st Thanksgiving. Altogether it was a great Thanksgiving feast in the UK. The only thing missing was green bean casserole, but we lived.
And Thanksgiving also isn’t Thanksgiving without lots and lots of leftovers. The next evening we had Thanksgiving part II and everyone in the house prepared their own leftover plate. The mashed potatoes still were not gone after this. They were finished off after another day or 2 (we may have made too many). However, we now know how to make mass quantities of mashed potatoes and gravy, so we’re prepared for next time. In our home away from home we had a great Thanksgiving with the Westfield House family.
To see pictures of the game, the preparation, the feast and Thanksgiving part II, click here.
We wanted to do the dinner on Thanksgiving, but with the wives working and the guys in classes all day it wouldn’t have worked out, so Friday it was. For Thursday festivities I hooked up my computer to the TV in the house and we watched the Packers/Lions game. The Lions looked sad as usual, even when they made a desperate attempt to come back in the end. Same old lions, same old Thanksgiving tradition.
On Friday we decided that Thanksgiving just isn’t Thanksgiving without a friendly game of touch (American) football. So the manly men went out to the park and played for a good 2+ hours while we let the 3 turkeys bake in the ovens. After the wives got home from work the kitchen was in a flurry until the dinner began at 8:00 p.m. We finished mashing and mixing about 2 minutes before the dinner was supposed to begin…good timing for hot mashed potatoes. We had the meal in the hall of the church because there was such a crowd. The spread looked amazing, and it tasted the same. We also had some live music and a message from Andrew Yeager concerning the 1st Thanksgiving. Altogether it was a great Thanksgiving feast in the UK. The only thing missing was green bean casserole, but we lived.And Thanksgiving also isn’t Thanksgiving without lots and lots of leftovers. The next evening we had Thanksgiving part II and everyone in the house prepared their own leftover plate. The mashed potatoes still were not gone after this. They were finished off after another day or 2 (we may have made too many). However, we now know how to make mass quantities of mashed potatoes and gravy, so we’re prepared for next time. In our home away from home we had a great Thanksgiving with the Westfield House family.
To see pictures of the game, the preparation, the feast and Thanksgiving part II, click here.
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