Thanksgiving all around the world

Yesterday was a wonderful Thanksgiving on the eastern side of the world.  On Tuesday, I had to go to three different stores to get the needed supplies, but after trips to two local stores and one import store I was ready to bake away. oh and plus some supplies sent from hom.  I did however make a bit of a faux pas when I asked the local Canadian family, who owns our local import store, how they were celebrating Thanksgiving.  The lady was nice but quickly told me that Thanksgiving is an American holiday.  Uh, hello Whit.  So anyway, remind me not to invite our British friends to a July 4th cookout.....

My job was to bake the pumpkin pies, and then of course in my Martha Stewartness I decided to go the extra mile and make a pumpkin roll (my mom's famous pumpkin roll) and mashed potatoes.  The family we were having Thanksgiving with had decided to have candied yams instead of mash potatoes.  Who does that?  So it was like the Friends episode were we had to have a couple of kinds of potatoes in honor of every one's individual traditions...lol

.  I had bought alot of the necessary supplies while in the capital last week.  Cinnamon, 5 spice, whipping cream and of course Christmas lights.  Yes I know, Christmas lights have nothing to do with cooking 

but they make me happy.  Everything here had to be made from scratch so I knew this was going to be a bit of an adventure.  This American, microwa

ve girl just isn't used to making stuff homemade.  Well you learn.  So I cranked up the Christmas music, plugged in the lights and even had some football on in the background.  A bit of a media overkill, I will confess but it almost felt like home. 

Asia lesson # 325-I originally thought the seasoning "5 spice" by McCormick, that I picked up in the capital was the same thing as All Spice you buy in the states.  You know the spice you use at home for pumpkin pie, that has ginger, cinnamon, sugar, etc.  The bottle, written in Chinese, did in fact show a cinnamon stick on the outside of it, so I just 

assumed it was All spice and went on my way.  Ho

wever, I discovered while in the midst of mixing the pumpkin pie, 5 spice, is not All Spice.  5 Spice is some weird Chinese mixture of garlic, cinnamon and who knows what else.  It smells terrible!  Luckily I smelled it before i put it into the pie mixture and a friend in the neighborhood saved the day by having clove

s and ginger on hand.  Long story short, the pies, pumpkin roll and my kind of potatoes turned out great.  You never get to old for your mother's recipes and advice.  

One of the guys plates on round 2.  Notice that 80% of that plate was chicken & dressing.  Also, that plate is alot bigger in real life.  

-5 SPICE 

So we gathered together with some American friends to eat some yummy Thanksgiving food.  We also had invited all of our team people.  It's important for you to know that some of our team is Caucasian and some are Asian, but still we are all American.  So with the different cultures around the world, you can have different American cultures as well.  Take the different types of potatoes.....We also had invited a few of our national friends as well.  So Thanksgiving on the eastern side of the world consisted of chop

sticks, dinner rolls, spring rolls, pumpkin pie, opossum pie (someone else's tradition and I have no clue what that is) corn, chicken wings (Asian style), mac & cheese, broccoli casserole, a huge bowl of rice, some type of cabbage salad (another Asian dish), candied yams, a type of sweet potato fries(another Asian food) and chicken and dressing.  Sorry to disappoint you folks, but no turkey for us.  Turkeys are hard to get and apparently expensive here.  It was a fun mixture of so many different kinds of foods and cultures.  It was really fun to look around the room and see plates with Asian cuisine and some plates with half Asian food, half American food.....that was mostly the kids.  We watched last year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade someone had taped and sent in a box as if it were this years and talked about what the locals must have thought of all our American traditions and parades with cheerleaders..lol.  Over all it was a wonderful Thanksgiving and I'm so thankful to the Father that the day was a busy and happy one!  I was so caught up in the fun and was sooo tired at the end of the day, I almost forgot to call my parents.  Oops!  

Pumpkin Pie in my tiny toaster oven.  

So since I'm here and Thanksgiving is, I learned an America only holiday, does that mean I get to eat huge meals for two days instead of one...because of the time zones??? 

Happy belated Thanksgiving all around the world!

Beautiful Feet