!Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving!

It is really weird working on Thanksgiving. Everything is just another day here, naturally… but when you know that its Thanksgiving… its just the weirdest feeling. Some new friends had us over on the applicable Saturday night.. and that was just super awesome of them. They lived in Motor City for a few years, so they knew the drill. Awesome people, we look forward to returning the favour somehow.... !!! See that favour? I’m typing this at work, and my Microsoft Office spellcheck thinks I must be British. Bob's your uncle. Sheesh. Please be patient with any unintentional weirdness brought on by this. What a bunch of rubbish.

Back to Tday. We wanted to spread the American spirit with our other Swiss friends as well, so, we had our Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night. Everything was made from scratch, so we were mega busy all weekend. In Switzerland a turkey costs 80 francs, so you better do it good.

We started at 5, and finished off at about 2am, and going to work on Monday was just… ugh. We had 5 Swiss guests, Christoph, his bro Michael, Michaela, Robi and Sandra. Here are the results:

Appetizers:

Devilled eggs: The Swiss were mystified, never seen them before. They seemed to like them.

Salami Rolls: salami w/cream cheese. Also a new experience, they ate all of them, or maybe Shelly ate all of them, not sure. Shelly likes these with pickles in them, but we couldn’t find pickles that weren’t totally disgusting. We bought some different types, all were sweet, and none were crunchy.

Jell-O: Scared the crap out of them. They were putting on their coats when I told them that I made the Jell-O with vodka instead of water, and then they decided to stick around and try it. They totally hated it, but for some reason ate all of it. Helps with digestion I guess.

Chocolate candies w peanut butter fudge filling: Shelly has a mold, which she paints with melted chocolate, then fills with peanut butter fudge, and then seals with chocolate to make these. This is an art that was learned from Lisa. Pretty cool. Peanut butter was non existent in Switzerland until like 5 years ago, so many have never had it, don’t know what to do with it, and the idea of PB&J is freaky. The ones that tried the candies thought they were very impressive.

Dinner:

Turkey was killer, very moist. The Swiss wanted to know how we kept the breast meat so moist. They nearly died when they found out that we cooked the turkey with a can of beer shoved up in it. Also, Shelly about passed out in the kitchen when she opened the turkey and it still had some feathers on it, neck was still attached and the giblets were... not in a bag, rather still part of the bird. Prepping the bird was like a B horror movie, Shelly actually left the apartment while I did the dirty work. I feel like I could survive anything after that. This surprise made us about an hour late on our scheduled mealtime.

Stuffing, from scratch on the stovetop. They don't have that here, so no chance of making it from a box. One of a few recipes that went over pretty well, since it was made of ingredients they are familiar with, but yet completely foreign tasting to them.

Green Bean casserole, same review as stuffing basically. A bit weird for them, but generally good.

Mashed Potatoes, normal for them, well liked.

Corn on Cob. Well liked, but they didn’t cover it in butter or salt. Shelly is going to be really upset when she finally realizes she never set out her corn holders.

Candied Yams/sweet potatoes or whatever: We found Süskartoffeln (sweet potatoes) at the big grocery in Bern, but generally speaking they don’t eat them and don’t know how to prepare them or anything. Marshmallows freak these people out. And it took me forever to find a store that had them, and the ones I did find were rectangular and pink on one side, and when I was buying them I was asked more than once if it is true that we really put them in hot chocolate in the US. I love explaining that we have hot chocolate mix in the states that actually comes with marshmallows, and its called Swiss Miss. Back to the Yams: so we didn't put marshmallows on top. and we didnt tell them there were marshmallows melted in it until much later. One guy liked it a lot, the others not so much, but all ate it.

Desserts:

Pumpkin pie. Yup, I started with a pumpkin, and made a pie. It turned out almost as good as Frisch's. They make other things out of pumpkins here, but not pies. They thought this was super cool, and ate it with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream just like the Indians/Pilgrims did. A big hit. Not as difficult to make as you might think. Finding a pumpkin was interesting. They are everywhere, but there are like 8 different kinds. Our friend Michael dropped one off, he had it leftover from a soup he makes at parties. It was perfect.

Apple Pie. Well liked. I think they eat apple pie generally as a meal, so loading it up with ice cream and having after a big meal was a challenge....

I didn’t have any American football highlight reels, so I just threw some old Motown tunes on the stereo, and all were merry.

Best Holiday wishes to our friends back home,
e/s