Thanksgiving Again

I am a little frustrated.  What more can I say about Thanksgiving that I haven't already said?  I have written more than a time or two of our expat Thanksgiving celebrations in Our Germany here and here and here and here - among others.  Really A LOT have I written!  But I have to do it again, so thank you for tolerating my ramblings.

Welcome to Thanksgiving. Here's Michelle's turkey attachments to a pumpkin and the asters from a year ago that survived and were allowed to grow naturally.  I take no credit for the asters or the pumpkin except that they are on the stoop. And nice.  But the colors clash. Purple and orange?

More than any holiday, Thanksgiving is about Tradition with a capital T.  Mother asks every year, Don't they have Thanksgiving there?   No, it is uniquely American.  But some things transfer well with a little training, and since we have been doing Thanksgiving now for 20+ years, our folks are well trained.  And here, just as in the USofA, you can tweak, but don't mess too much with Tradition:  turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, pecan pie.  Other details vary.  That said, even the basics get a tweak now and again. 

Menu for 2015: 

Curried Cauliflower Soup
Roast Turkey
Cornbread Dressing
Cranberry Sauce
Brussels Sprouts
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Black-eyed Peas
Key Lime Pie
Pecan Pie

Everything is from scratch.  There is no Pepperidge Farm cornbread dressing mix, no Pillsbury pie crust, no Oceanspray cranberry sauce, no Butterball turkey, no canned peas.  So we start early. 

Even the table gets done before Saturday.  This year Werner asked: Can  we use some white linen napkins instead?  No, sorry.  No change.  Our Tradition.

Our group was down to 8 this year, but it's still the "big" table and still the "Grandma" china. Tradition.

Our tweaks?  The turkey got a major shake up!  It no longer looks very traditional, but all flat and splat since we did a spatchcock turkey this year. Tradition out the door!!

It looks rather immodest, but we were thrilled with the results: a crispy, moist turkey quickly done!! Tradition makes way for good and tasty.

But first the soup - and a group portrait. 

Well, soup.  Major disaster. Several weeks ago, we'd bought purple cauliflower at the market and made a remarkable soup - so amazingly lavender-colored! We thought we'd do that for Thanksgiving!  Yeah, but this time somehow it wasn't the same - late cauliflower, darker turkey stock base, who knows?  It was brown-gray, brown-gray-brown, unappetizing looking.  Tweak.  Add curry.  That helped the flavor enormously, but the color -- not so much.  But our friends come hungry and curious about the soup, so it was a hit! Wow, that's great!  Who knew?

And then the rest of the food.  Photographer fail.  NO PICTURES.  No picture of the lovely carved turkey, the yummy peas and potatoes and dressing and the amazing sweet potatoes and etc.  Ingrid went bonkers over the dressing.  What is that?  How do you make cornbread?  Where do you get the flour?  Funny our our lowly cornbread can become so exotic in another setting. Our regulars just smiled and said, Eat. Enjoy.

Dietmar, an old friend of Werner's from high school and one the first of his friends I met here in Bremen way back at the very beginning, was a late addition to our Thanksgiving table.  He tried so hard to decline and confessed he didn't really want to come because, since his retirement, he's assiduously avoided having appointments on his calendar. Actually, he's not alone in that. But it worked out.  He appeared to more than enjoy the conversation and the food.  Even managed to take seconds on the food.  What a compliment.  Thank you, Dietmar!  Maybe you should make more appointments.... just sayin'.

The weather was unwelcoming.  Drizzle, cold, getting dark early.  Want to take a walk?  Uhhhhh.  Come on!  Let's walk.  Uhhhhh.  But we did.  And it was good to walk off some turkey before tackling the pies:  Key lime and Pecan.  Years before, I'd done three, but two was enough.  I think.  No one complained.

And after another couple of hours of coffee and schnapps and talk and schnapps and wine and talk and talk, we called it a night, but reluctantly. Sigh.  Guests gone and then the clean up.  But since the earlier-in-the-day beginning, clean up means we get to bed before midnight!  OK!!

It was totally lovely.  We will totally do it again. Of course we will.  Was that a question???

And the next morning - a first dusting of snow!  That's fun - since it is Sunday and we don't have to do anything we don't want to do, that means we don't have to get in the car and drive anywhere.

After breakfast out, a rarity for us, we wandered over to the local mall for a little art show.  It was half kitsch, half wonderful.  To excite the crowd, young ladies go around passing out slips of paper so you can vote on your favorite work among the various stands.  OK. We'll play.

So we looked a bit more carefully and found an artist who really spoke to us with her lovely watercolors, realistic but with an appealing style.  And then I fell in love with a particular piece, and when that happens, I just go with my feelings.

Now we own a small watercolor, a wonderful rendition by a non-native of the Bremen Cathedral from a slightly different, non-native point of view that particularly spoke to another non-native - me - who loves this city. I can relate. It joins a watercolor of Paris, and precious original prints of Florence and New York, other cities close to my heart.

 

Here it is - a poor reproduction of the original - in our gemütlich little Bremen house.

Every Thanksgiving I am so grateful for friends who come and celebrate with us what Thanksgiving is all about - sharing and communing over generations and states and countries. Let's keep talking.