... or عيد الشكر...
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I mean, it involves a ton of really awesome food (pumpkin pie, need I say more?), being around family and friends, a long weekend off from school.... Thanksgiving also tends to be very different each year in my family, so it's always fun to think about how to out-do the previous year. Last year, it was the invasion of the Brits. My uncle (on my mum's side) was there, as well as one of my closest friends, Anna Lisa, and two other girls from Scotland who were all studying abroad in Georgia, and another good friend, Maya, who was in choir with me in Jordan. Anna Lisa wrote a great post about it.
This year, it was shaping up to be very different. My younger sister wasn't going to be there. Until the week before, we thought it would be just 5 of us. But then it changed a bit - I invited my Arabic professor, who brought her friend from Egypt with her, and my mum invited some colleagues from work, who were from Saudi Arabia. By the time Thanksgiving day rolled around, it looked like there would be a lot of Arabic heard around the house. I was pretty excited about it.
The real adventure though was in the cooking. We had roughly 17 dishes that were prepared, some I didn't even know about until we were cleaning up... I was in charge of 6 dishes, which probably won't happen again. It was kind of crazy. But the food was delicious! We deep fried the turkey - it was perfect this time - and made some traditional dishes, like green bean casserole, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows of course), stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Then we had had some more interesting dishes, like jalapeno poppers, whiskey-glazed carrots, potato and carrot cake, roasted parsnips, apple dumplings, lemon creme pie, pumpkin creme roll, tabbouleh and grape and rosemary calzones. Of course, I insisted on a number of Pioneer Woman recipes. I love her stuff. Our guests brought some traditional Arab sweets and Arab coffee.
We only had maybe two major hiccups. The first was around 11am, when I put the pumpkin pie into the oven. After about 15 minutes, the oven decided it didn't want to play nice anymore, freaked out, and shut down. So we fired up the grill outside to finish cooking the pie, but when we went to take it out of the oven, it locked. My dad spent a few minutes trying to jail-break my pie, and eventually got it free. It finished cooking just fine in the grill. We gave the oven a few hours of time-out, and then it worked just fine for the rest of the day. I was glad we weren't trying to cook the turkey in the oven. The second snafu was a total blonde moment on my part. I took the sweet potatoes out of the oven to check them, forgot that the glass top of the casserole dish had been in the oven for 40 minutes, and picked it up with my bare hand. Yeah, it burned my thumb and three fingers. I also may have thrown it across the kitchen when I realized I was getting burnt. But it was very well made and didn't break. Other than that, everything went smoothly! The only thing that I'm sad about is that we forgot to get a group picture... We were having too much fun to think about it. So, here are the few pictures I do have:
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I mean, it involves a ton of really awesome food (pumpkin pie, need I say more?), being around family and friends, a long weekend off from school.... Thanksgiving also tends to be very different each year in my family, so it's always fun to think about how to out-do the previous year. Last year, it was the invasion of the Brits. My uncle (on my mum's side) was there, as well as one of my closest friends, Anna Lisa, and two other girls from Scotland who were all studying abroad in Georgia, and another good friend, Maya, who was in choir with me in Jordan. Anna Lisa wrote a great post about it.
This year, it was shaping up to be very different. My younger sister wasn't going to be there. Until the week before, we thought it would be just 5 of us. But then it changed a bit - I invited my Arabic professor, who brought her friend from Egypt with her, and my mum invited some colleagues from work, who were from Saudi Arabia. By the time Thanksgiving day rolled around, it looked like there would be a lot of Arabic heard around the house. I was pretty excited about it.
The real adventure though was in the cooking. We had roughly 17 dishes that were prepared, some I didn't even know about until we were cleaning up... I was in charge of 6 dishes, which probably won't happen again. It was kind of crazy. But the food was delicious! We deep fried the turkey - it was perfect this time - and made some traditional dishes, like green bean casserole, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows of course), stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Then we had had some more interesting dishes, like jalapeno poppers, whiskey-glazed carrots, potato and carrot cake, roasted parsnips, apple dumplings, lemon creme pie, pumpkin creme roll, tabbouleh and grape and rosemary calzones. Of course, I insisted on a number of Pioneer Woman recipes. I love her stuff. Our guests brought some traditional Arab sweets and Arab coffee.
We only had maybe two major hiccups. The first was around 11am, when I put the pumpkin pie into the oven. After about 15 minutes, the oven decided it didn't want to play nice anymore, freaked out, and shut down. So we fired up the grill outside to finish cooking the pie, but when we went to take it out of the oven, it locked. My dad spent a few minutes trying to jail-break my pie, and eventually got it free. It finished cooking just fine in the grill. We gave the oven a few hours of time-out, and then it worked just fine for the rest of the day. I was glad we weren't trying to cook the turkey in the oven. The second snafu was a total blonde moment on my part. I took the sweet potatoes out of the oven to check them, forgot that the glass top of the casserole dish had been in the oven for 40 minutes, and picked it up with my bare hand. Yeah, it burned my thumb and three fingers. I also may have thrown it across the kitchen when I realized I was getting burnt. But it was very well made and didn't break. Other than that, everything went smoothly! The only thing that I'm sad about is that we forgot to get a group picture... We were having too much fun to think about it. So, here are the few pictures I do have:
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| making the pumpkin desserts with my mamma |
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| locked in! |
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| jail-breaking the pie |
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| turkey's done! |
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| ...beautifully done! |
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| pulling out the fine china |
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| what was left of the spread once I remembered to take pictures |
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| Pioneer Woman's apple dumplings. |
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| lemon creme pie |
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| pumpkin creme roll |
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| traditional Arab sweets |
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| and pumpkin pie, of course! |
It all looks yummy!! Hope your hand is feeling better! :)
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