A Thanksgiving Feast

This year, I thought Mike and I would be all alone for Thanksgiving. I was a little sad because I usually love the huge spread of foods that is made for a larger crowd–there’s nothing more satisfying than taking “a little bit of everything.” But since it was going to be just the two of us, I didn’t want to make a ridiculously large amount of food that we then couldn’t eat.

But then, one evening when we went to our local bar, we were explaining what Thanksgiving was at one moment, and the next we were offering to cook a huge dinner for everybody this Thursday! So now, I feel like the pressure is on. It’s not that I can’t cook, because I can. But I think I’m nervous because the things I do cook are so wildly different from what our friends are used to eating. haha I can’t help but think “I hope they like my cooking!” even though it probably doesn’t matter in the end because it’s more about getting together and having fun, right?

So here’s what I plan on cooking:

• Turkey if we can find it. If we can’t find a whole turkey, I’ll roast one or two ducks.
• Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
• Stuffing
• Corn Casserole
• Sweet Potatoes (but there are no marshmallows to be found here!! That’s my favorite part! We’ll see what I end up doing)
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan Pie

And I feel like I need another vegetable dish, but I’m not sure if I want to do something traditional like green bean casserole, or if I should do something different like roasted cauliflower or something.

Now, finding the ingredients to everything is not always the easiest thing in the world. I already ordered the pumpkin puree and karo syrup online for my pies, so I should be good to go there. Though, pecans were nowhere to be found in the store, so I guess I’m going to make Walnut Pie. No one will know the difference, I promise

I’m hoping that we can find a whole turkey, though when we went to the grocery store on Saturday, there wasn’t a whole gobbler to be found anywhere. Maybe the last one had been snatched up by some other Americans who needed to celebrate Thanksgiving? Who knows. The lack of marshmallows is a problem. I’d make my own, but I’m not sure if I want to run all over town for the ingredients to make them.  And again…the lack of soft brown sugar is daunting. The only “brown sugar” they have here is Demerara sugar, which is different and doesn’t taste the same or give the same texture to dishes. What are sweet potatoes without brown sugar and marshmallows? Any delicious sweet potato recipes that don’t have those ingredients are welcome (not mashed though since I’m doing mashed potatoes).

So we’ll see. I’m excited and nervous to make dinner for everyone. I even promised that I’d learn how to say all of my dishes in Spanish so they’d know what they’re eating! (Jess, omg please help me on this!) The real challenge will be cooking everything here and making sure that it stays warm until we take it to the bar to eat. Since they can’t exactly close their doors to paying customers on a plain ole’ Thursday, we’re taking everything over there! Mike wants to try to hook up our computer to their big screen television so we can watch football too

Let’s hope that everything turns out well and I don’t mess it all up terribly!! Are you cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year? Have you run into any challenges while putting together your meal plan?