Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday night with our landlords/neighbors Panos and Eva as well as our Spanish neighbors Mikela and Cisco. We supplied dinner and pies, Panos and Eva provided the cooking utensils and Greek wine, and Mikela and Cisco provided the dining room table, salad, brownies, Greek pumpkin desert and champagne.

It took us a week to find all the ingredients. We had to go to 3 grocery stores, a bakery and an international butcher. It took the butcher 3 days to find us a turkey but he found one for us. The butcher torched the turkey before he let us take it home. We found a can of pumpkin in the international section of one grocery store between the Chinese and Mexican food. On our very last attempt on Saturday afternoon we found a can of cranberry sauce in the desert section. We thought that we found some sweet potatoes at a roadside vegetable stand but when we cut into it we realized it was some kind of root. Including all of the contributions from our guests our final menu was:

Dinner
8 kilo Turkey (18 lbs)
Dad's (Ron's) stuffing
mashed potatoes
gravy
corn
peas
cranberry sauce (the jelly kind)
bread
Greek red wine

Dessert
Mom's (Cary's) apple pie
Grammy's pumpkin pie
brownies
Greek pumpkin desert (strips of pumpkin in honey)
Cava Spanish champagne
tea and espresso

We baked and cooked all day on Saturday and had everyone come to our flat for Greek white and rose wine aperitifs. After we shimmied the turkey out of our oven at 9pm Rich and Panos carved the turkey while Meredith made the gravy. Mikela was our photographer. Eva and Cisco offered moral support.

Once everything was prepared we brought everything upstairs to Mikela and Cisco's flat to eat. Their table sits 6 while ours only sits 4. Mikela took a picture of everyone at the table.

Dinner was very good and our guests enjoyed the meal. But as always, dessert was the favorite part of the meal. Meredith baked 2 apple and 2 pumpkin pies and Mikela baked brownies and brought Greek pumpkin. Cisco poured some Cava champagne which was excellent. Here's a picture of the pies before dessert and a picture of Meredith serving the apple pie.

At 1:30am everyone helped bring everything back down to our flat. Before everyone headed back to their flat with their share of the leftovers we all signed our first Thanksgiving table cloth and noted in Greek, Spanish, English, or Mallorcan what each person was Thankful for this year.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we are so happy that we have such wonderful neighbors. We missed everyone back home and we hope you also had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

FYI - Eva has invited us to visit her parents' home on the Greek island of Paros to help them pick olives and make fresh olive oil. Look for that post in the near future!