Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2011

We had the largest Thanksgiving meal I have ever had/probably will ever have in my entire life. Everyone was in charge of making one dish, so we all gave our ingredients to Sylvia (Villa coordinator) and she ordered them all to the villa. It was funny because they do not have the same type of ingredients/food in Italy that we have in the states. Marshmellows are not like marshmellows we have.. they were special marshmellows in fruit shapes. Sweet potatoes are not orange... they are white, so our sweet potato caserole was white potatoes with pink and greek and blue marshmellows on top.. it looked a little odd, but it sure did taste good! They dont have graham crackers to make cheesecake crusts, so I used coookies. The peanut butter comes in a tiny jar, so when they only had one jar at one store, they had to go to another store to find more. Cream of mushroom soup is a rarity, so we were a little short in that department for the greenbean caserole. Our turkeys were the size of a small elephant.. we had two. For the rest of our menu, we had stuffing(oh they dont have stuffing here, so we cut up all the ingredients ourselves), twice baked poatatoes(but they dont have baking potatoes, or cheddar cheese), brocolli, asparagus, sweet bread, corn pudding(corn does not come in cans either), chicken wings and soup, cranberry sauce, sangria, wine, cheesecake, pumpkin pie(they could only find two cans, so they suggested we cut up our own pumpkin to make this), apple pie, buckeyes, chocolate/coconut pie.. and that is all I can remember. Basically, everyone made one of their favorite dishes, and the entire thing was very impressive, amazing really, given our cooking circumstances.. and the oven that has no temperature settings. It was fun to share our Thanksgiving with the Italians who work at the villa and their families!