Thanksgiving Memories

On Thanksgiving this year, I sent this photo from a restaurant
to my boys in Virginia and Kuwait. 

My sons like to tease me about my cooking. They say things like:

"Your specialty is coffee...or water."

"You are the only person I know who can burn a frozen pizza."

I'm really not that terrible a cook, but I lack two important qualities of a skilled chef: interest and the ability to focus. So easily I get distracted in my multi-tasking. 

But, "necessity is the mother of invention," and living in Asia for years I managed to gain some Holiday Cooking Skills.

The BEST Thanksgivings were the years we had an Open House in Singapore. We'd get the word out to any expat "orphans." We invited Singaporean friends. They had grown up watching American TV shows depicting Thanksgiving, but they had never actually eaten sweet potatoes with brown sugar sauce. A large group always came willing to step in and be our surrogate extended family. 

Everyone brought something, so we always had enough to eat. It always seemed a bit miraculous how it worked out without any RSVPs. I cooked as much as my oven would bear of the traditional foods. Stuffing was always the favorite. 

One year, 2009 we had over 60 people come through our 1200sq foot apartment. The place was packed. We gathered around a table piled high with food, and my husband James welcomed everyone. He told of the initial Thanksgiving feast with the pilgrims. He read a few of the Thanksgiving proclamations made by previous American presidents. Everyone's mouths were watering as we smelled the foods beneath us as Jim said the prayer.

As soon as Jim said "AMEN," I had a terrible realization. I had neglected to make gravy. 

Our son Tyler, then sixteen, was apoplectic. "HOW CAN YOU FORGET THE GRAVY? THAT'S THE BEST PART!!???" 

I whipped some up pretty fast and we managed to not suffer without it. You can bet I'll never forget gravy again! 

My first Thanksgiving in China 1997, we had lived there for less than two months. I didn't have a stove or range to cook on. I didn't even have pots and pans! Still, It was Thanksgiving. I NEEDED to make some epicurean comfort.  The problem was that I was already in my 30's and married over ten years, but I had always avoided the kitchen.  What I lacked in experience and interest, I made up for in creativity and determination. We needed a break from our daily fair of local Chinese cafeteria foods. So, I set out to do it all. I was going to produce the Thanksgiving Feast.

(Besides, my parents were flying over from Los Angeles. And they were worried about how we were surviving life in mainland China.)

I found an electric oven the size of a breadbox. It had an erratic thermostat, yet I managed to bake pies and cornbread. I found a crockpot in a local department store and used it to make everything else. The potatoes, stuffing and sweet potatoes were cooked in that crock pot, layered with aluminum foil. 

We found a turkey for sale from the kitchen at the best hotel in town: THE HOLIDAY INN. We took that bird to a local pizza restaurant with a large brick oven. 

It all turned out quite edible! And for the happy grandparents who missed the kids so much, it didn't matter WHAT we ate! I was so proud of myself to get it all hot at the same time through unconventional methods. 

I survived those two years in China by thinking I was camping indoors; all the time. Thanksgiving '97 was one of the milestones.