So today was the big day for me. The day that I had literally been preparing all month for! Luckily, my lovely mum sent me a complete time schedule to try and make the dinner go as smoothly as planned. I had made the fudge and the stuffing previously, on Thursday. But regardless, I still had to wake up at 8 (early for me on a weekend...) and I literally cooked / was running errands all day.
My first order of business was to make my mum's delicious rolls. Pascale had done the rest of the shopping for Thanksgiving the day before, and although almost everything worked out, there was a mix up between baking powder and yeast. I needed yeast to make the rolls, but Pascale bought baking powder. I realized that, at least in French, yeast and baking powder have the exact same translation. And since Pascale seemed convinced that they were the exact same thing, I decided not ot push it. So I made the rolls, and then we headed out to do some last minute shopping (I needed to get the rest of the supplies for PB&J's for the exotic dinner tommorrow and I forgot to add a couple of ingredients onto the list... Whoops.) We also went to Katie's house to pick up the supplies that I had bought and given to her to make me a pumpkin pie. The Lancaster Family isn't exactly known for their pies... In fact, we go with the Costco pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving. But for whatever reason, she didn't have the time or something to make the pie. My back-up plan was to make pumpkin pie dip and serve it with some kind of cookie similiar to ginger snaps, but that didn't end up happening either... Oh well! Ended up having tons of food anyhow...
WE got back from the shopping trip at about 12. And literally good straight through, all by myelf, until like 4:30, at the least. My plan was to have dinner at 3, but I ended up being about 30 minutes behind, and there were some unfortunate happenings with my friends. Emmaline and Becky were supposed to come early to help me cook. Becky couldn't end up coming early, because she had to cook herself for the exotic dinner the next day. Emmaline was coming back from spending the night at a friend's house, so I expected for her ot be a bit late. But then time just kept on running on and on, and still no news from Emmaline. i was literally so busy cooking that I didn't have time to check up on. Turns out, she had a bit of difficulties with her host dad, and she thought she had a ride but actually didn't. She also thought that Thanksgiving dinner was actually AT dinnertime, not at 3 (Even though I am pretty darn sure I told her... But oh well.) Meanwhile, while I had no idea how the heck Emmaline was going to get here, my Aussie friends Maddy and Bel had taken the bus going the opposite direction of my house... And that one was actually my fault, in the confusion of trying to get all of that darn food cooked I wasn't really even paying attention to what the heck I was saying. Luckily, the bus driver was turning the bus around and just coming back the other way, so they made it. But then, once they actually got to the stop, they starting walking up the wrong hill (I had told them to call me once they got there, guess they forgot...). But when they realized they had no idea where they were going, they called me and Eddy drove down to the end of the road to go pick them up. So, three out of my four friends had arrived by 3:30 and all of the food was prepared.
Meanwhile, Emmaline was trying to take a bus that didn't even arrive until probably like 5. When Pascale asked me where Emmaline was, I told her the situation and that we were just going to have to eat without her. But then Pascale was all like "Why didn't you tell me before? I'll just take the other ladies and go and pic her up." So I called her and told her to go to the center of an easily acessible town, Battice. Turns out that what we thought was the center wasn't the center, just another main little shopping district. So Pascale ended up driving to 2 different places (at least they were close together...) And, as you can imagine, at this point I was completely freaking out. I had already spent the entire day cooking this huge meal with no help, when I had planned on at least 2 people pitching in, everyone was getting lost and not getting here on time, and now I had to worry about the food getting cold. But once Emmaline arrived with Pascale, I just breathed a sigh of relief, took everything out of the oven or microwave or wherever I could find to keep the food warm, and started to eat. I thought I was going to be ravenous after not really eating anything all day (too busy cooking...), but I actually didn't end up having much of an appetite.
In the end, I made a turkey (which was cool for the Belgians because they have never had a turkey big like that), rolls (which indeed didn't rise... yay for baby sized rolls!), a green bean casserole, cranberry sauce (fresh out of the can ;) ), mashed potatoes and gravy (somehow the gravy ended up being sweet???), sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top (yuck...), a fruit salad, my favorite: my grandma's apple sausage stuffing, and fudge and cinnamon rolls for dessert (which were also baby sized..). Everyone absolutely loved it. For me, it was ok. I couldn't help but notice all of the mistakes, or how it didn't taste exactly like Thanksgiving back home. And for whatever reason, I wasn't even all that hungry!
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| Me & My Dinner! |
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| The Turkey! (which had its skin ripped off by the turkey bag and got cooked with the giblets still in it,, whoops!) |
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| Fruit Salad!! (which I didn't even get to eat :/) |
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| STUFFING! |
The five of us hung out for a bit after the dinner, and then Becky, Maddy, and Bel had to go and catch the bus into town to catch their connecting buses. Maddy and Bel even still had to do some shopping and cooking for their Aussie dish! (Now, granted, it was only like 7:30, but still...). Emmaline and I had made previous plans for her to spend the night and then go together to the exotic dinner the next day. It was a fun night, because I hadn't seen her in a while and we got to catch up. She was also nice and helped me clean up the mess I had left in the kitchen, which suprisingly wasn't bad at all because I had tried to clean up as I went along! But the dishwasher was completely full, so we ended up having to handwash a lot of dishes, and the table still needed to be cleared too. But after that, we had the whole night just to relax and have the wonderful "I am in a complete Thanksgiving food coma" feeling.
This Thanksgiving, although it definitely hasn't been my favorite, will be one I remember forever. And I hope, with all of my heart, that I will not be cooking a Thanksgiving meal by myself for a VERY long time (if ever... I plan on using my mum's tactic of making everyone take responsibility for a dish! Or maybe I will just always go home...). And, after 2 long posts, I would say that I am done for the day! :) Merry Eve before Christmas Eve everyone!
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