Thanksgiving

To say we have a lot to be thankful for would be the understatement of a lifetime. To celebrate and potentially tamper the enthusiasm a bit I continued my Thanksgiving cooking tradition. I laid out the dinner similar to past years – chips and onion soup mix dip, devil eggs, pot roast & bow ties, and desert. The twist this year was I decided to make pumpkin pie as well. The pumpkin pie was quite an experiment with me making it feel harder than it actually was, with Lydia and Elisa enthusiastically helping. Part of the pain in making it is that I could not find ready made crusts here so we had to make our own crusts, which turned out way better than I expected. The pie ended up being the major hit.

In past years my pot roast has seen mixed reviews. As in the first year I made it everyone loved it because they could not believe I actually cooked. In subsequent years people went straight for the Chinese food with the pot roast left to be nibbled at. This year’s version was a bit better for some reason and since we had less Chinese competing food, folks pretty much ate it. Not that we didn’t have any Chinese style food, we did have a Peking duck delivered to play the role of a Turkey.

No Turkey, you ask? Our choices for Turkey is to go to one of the many expat places serving it for the day but they tend not to be great Turkey and a bit overpriced. Service is also spotting since most of these places do not make Turkey dinner on a regular basis and have trouble keeping pace. We could cook a small one but Turkey meat is even less of a favorite here then my pot roast and we only have a small oven. So pot roast it was.

A few friends came over and we snacked and eventually ate our stomachs to the bursting point. And felt thankful, especially for family. Now if there was only a football game to watch afterward or a movie to go to. Can’t have everything, I guess, but can be thankful for what we do have.