Last year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at a friend's house, but this year we will be celebrating 3 (yes, that is right 3) Thanksgivings at OUR HOUSE. Gracious, what was I thinking? But all of our celebrating will be done on other days than the actual day, because Thanksgiving is just another day here in China: Andy has to work, the kids have school, and I have classes. In fact, on Thanksgiving evening we will be eating Chinese food because I will be teaching English in the afternoon. :-)
We celebrated our first Thanksgiving on Tuesday and had friends over to our house. I skipped classes so that I could prepare. While people contributed food, I made the bulk of the traditional fare. We had corn bread pudding, mashed potatoes, stuffing, dao dou (a kind of Chinese bean very similar to french-cut green beans), cranberry sauce (made from dried cranberries), pumpkin & apple pies, sweet potato casserole, and of course turkey. Since nothing comes from a can, box or bag, it takes a bit of time to prepare. For the first time, I made a pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin!
There was a total of 25 people (including our kids) and for many of them, this was their first Thanksgiving. I always find it surprising what people from other countries like/don't like of our traditional foods. One of the girls was at first freaked out by the cranberry sauce because she thought it was made from the blood of the turkey (I kid you not!). She tried it after much reassurances that it was a fruit and from no part of the turkey (and she really liked it). I asked one of the guys if he had eaten turkey before, and he answered, "Yeah, at Subway." Hmmm, not quite the same! And he agreed after sampling the roasted turkey yumminess. People's favorites were: cranberry sauce, corn bread pudding, turkey, and the pumpkin pie. All in all a successful Thanksgiving #1!
Some of the guys doing the dishes after the meal. I will happily cook if other people will clean up my mess! ;-)
Doing some final preparations
One of the tables (people sitting here are from: France, India, Sierra Leone, Hong Kong, ....)
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