Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I sure did.

As the Miyagi JET living in a house (with an oven) I took it upon myself to host Thanksgiving. Luckily we had a 3-day weekend, so Thanksgiving in Miyagi was on Friday. I had about a dozen guests and a crazy amount of food. I really wanted to take a picture of all the food we had, but there was so much that it couldn't all fit on my table. The kitchen table was covered in dishes, as was my counter, and the stove!

One guy managed to find a turkey! I hadn't eaten any turkey since long before coming to Japan. I think this was the same for everyone here. He did an amazing job with it (especially considering it was his first time cooking a turkey). He brined it and everything. We also ate stuffing, sweet potatoes, two salads, vegetable ratatouille, deviled eggs, bruschetta, mashed potatoes, some sort of Hungarian egg and potato dish (with real Hungarian sausage!), cornbread....and I'm probably forgetting quite a few things. Dessert was an apple pie made completely from scratch, two different apple crisps, real whipped cream... And then of course, we suffered from food comas.

Long story short, everyone did an AMAZING job cooking (and eating). There was food, wine, and merriment. One person even brought Thanksgiving decorations while another one made origami out of Thanksgiving colors. My house has never felt so warm and inviting as it did with all the guests here.

A few of my guests were not American. Celebrating Thanksgiving was a novelty for them. At the beginning of the evening, Liz from New Zealand asked if there are any special Thanksgiving activities such as songs. We told her that there's a traditional dance that we do. Oh making up things about our home cultures--so much fun!

Three people stayed the night. Today we tackled the leftovers. We did a great job picking at the turkey carcass. I won the wishbone. And now I'm making some stock out of the turkey bones. I'll be eating leftovers for a couple more days!