Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US. This isn't something we celebrate in the UK, so it's going to be my very first Thanksgiving! I don't know much about this holiday, other than what I've seen on TV, and so far all I've gathered is that it involves a lot of food! So I wikipedia-ed it :
Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Traditionally, it has been a time to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. While it may have been religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday. It is sometimes casually referred to as Turkey Day.
So, there you have it! I'm not honestly sure I'm that much more informed :P We'll go with - it's a day of lots of food and giving thanks!
Our original plans were to go visit the brother of my boyfriend's step-dad and have Thanksgiving Dinner tonight with their family. For reasons beyond our control that plan fell through. I knew this would disappoint my boyfriend who had been looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner, and I hate to see my sweetheart sad, so I started googling simple Thanksgiving Dinner recipes! I know I know, ambitious right?!
Well I quickly discovered that everyone disagrees on what is "essential" to Thanksgiving dinner, I got very confused very quickly!! So I waited for my boyfriend to get home to ask what HE considered essential. He was closely followed by his sister, who it turned out also has the day off tomorrow (I was originally under the impression that she was working). So we decided we'll have dinner together, and cook it as a group effort. They discussed on and off for the next couple of hours about what they wanted for dinner, they were surprisingly easily distracted, sometimes it's like herding cats with these two :P
We FINALLY decided on -
- Ham
- Mashed potatoes
- Carrots
- Salad
- Gravy
- Cranberry Sauce
- Stuffing/dressing
- Pumpkin Pie
I don't like turkey at all (very fussy!), so I admit I'm not wholly disappointed about not having to go to a strangers house and eat weird food! I was more than willing to cook turkey for these two and fry up some pork for myself, but they agreed on ham as they like that just as much and it would mean just cooking 1 lot of meat. I'll also be cooking up a few roast potatoes as they're my favourite kind of potato and are more normal for a British dinner like this. I like to have SOMETHING I recognise :p I'll probably have ice cream for my dessert lol
I googled simple cranberry sauce and that looks ridiculously simple so I'm going to give making that a go, even though I was told they normally have it out of a can. His sister will be in charge of the pumpkin pie, maybe with my assistance, we'll see! My boyfriend was going to do the stuffing/dressing, but he weasled out of it by asking if his Mom had any spare from what she cooked up for the fallen through dinner :p
All this doesn't bear much resemblance to what we have for dinners like this in my family. We typically have some meat (usually beef, occasionally ham or chicken), roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings, steamed veg, gravy (which seems to be different here?), then bread and butter pudding for dessert or something like that.
I've never cooked a Christmas dinner, or even a Sunday lunch in my life - it's always my Dad who's in charge of those meals, and my sister who makes the desserts. Me, Mum and other siblings are just in charge of eating! :) But with his sister's assistance it'll probably be an acceptable dinner :)
I don't normally like cooking for her, or even with her presence in the kitchen! She's what I consider to be a "good cook", and I'm easily flustered and feel embarressed while cooking around people I think to be better than me. I don't mind cooking for my boyfriend anymore, but it's taken me a long time to stop feeling like he's judging me! Obviously he never was, and he sister isn't, but I'm paranoid :p So this should generally be...fun!
I'll keep you all posted, this should be an ...interesting... update tomorrow! Wish us all luck :)
And HAPPY THANKSGIVING (Eve)
:)
No comments:
Post a Comment