I'm Thankful

We had our turkey dinner on Tuesday, as it didn't work to have it today, and it was a lot of fun (and work)! It's always interesting trying to make proper food in a foreign country. Luckily, we were able to at least buy fresh pumpkins, which we roasted, then cooked down for the pies. We made 14 turkeys, 130 lbs of mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, broccoli salad, cheesy broccoli and cauliflower with red pepper, fresh dinner rolls with raspberry jam, cranberry sauce, 9 apple and 10 pumpkin pies with whipped cream. Everyone loved it! It's a good thing it only comes once a year, though! Allie and Beverly were in the kitchen that day, and I put them in charge of the pies! They are now professional pie bakers, after 19 large pies! They seriously did an awesome job. We had a very touch and go moment when Beverly came tearing up the stairs where we were carving the turkeys and frantically told me that there had been a misunderstanding and one of the other girls, who is learning both English and Norwegian, had mixed the pumpkin and apple pie fillings together! I ran downstairs, and luckily, the pumpkin filling was on top of the apple, and only mixed in a little. We scooped what we could off the top, then rinsed off the top layer of apples, and no one could tell the difference. Poor Allie and Bev were thoroughly upset at the thought of ruined pies after all their hard work, but it all worked out fine. Whew!

I showed them how to make LEAF cut-outs to put on top of the pies and they just went crazy and made christmas trees and spiders and just had fun with it!

Anna, making the stuffing!

My two awesome cooks, Emily and Andrea M!! (photo curtesy of Emily)

Slicing the potatoes for mashed potatoes.

We have a bar mixer that thinks it's a leaf blower that made short work of the mashing part of the potatoes! I wanted to get some pictures of the turkeys and stuff, but I was pretty busy saving pies and putting out fires, I just forgot until it was over. It was really cool though, and we had a lot of fun showing everyone what a Thanksgiving dinner was like. We made little cards to put on the table to tell about the first Thanksgiving and how it all started, so that people knew a bit about it. (photo curtesy of Emily) Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving today though! I was thinking about how much we have to be thankful for! I am so thankful for my place in life and everything that I've received, my family, friends, and that I'm still allowed to be here at the best place in the world! It's impossible to be unhappy when you are thankful from the bottom of your heart! It was really cool to talk to almost everyone in my family tonight on skype with the webcam. It was fun to be able to see everyone! Josh took the cake with his deep, deep voice and I just had to laugh because it was so funny to hear him! See you soon!!