Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving a day early here in Munich.  Since the kids had the day off from school Steve took the day off too so we could make a whole day of the celebration.  Tonight on the actual day, we will eat delicious leftovers and watch the Macy Day parade and a little football.  

Do you like my special plates?  

We started our day with breakfast from the bakery and delicious hot chocolate.  A new favorite treat is hot chocolate made by mixing steamed milk with a block of chocolate on a stick.  It's fun and so heavenly!

Waiting for them to learn that whether or not they cooperate
when I take the picture I'm still going to use it!

Next it was time to cook.  Some cooking shortcuts are not readily available here.  The missing items that affected us most were: canned pumpkin, evaporated milk, ready made pie crusts, cream of mushroom soup, fried onions, canned sweet potatoes, stuffing mixes, unsweetened chocolate and of course brown sugar (which I learned how to make right after we moved here).  However, I have found substitutions or new recipes to deal with each and every one of these missing ingredients!  By the way, it's a good thing I didn't make that list of "can't find in Germany" before now...

Seriously, all three of these pots are for the green bean casserole!

We started preparing on Sunday by baking cookies, Monday was cranberry sauce and shopping day, Tuesday was pie day.  Pumpkin pie, from scratch, apple pie, always from Steve's mom's recipe, and chocolate silk pie. Today, everyone helped with the cooking and the final product was definitely satisfying.  Everyone had to help because "from scratch" cooking is definitely more labor intensive!  We even tried the turkey a new way, cooking from a frozen state; and yes, it worked, and even better, was quite tasty.  Why would we cook a frozen turkey instead of defrosting one?  Mainly because there is not room in our refrigerator to thaw a turkey for three-five days.  Really, this 12lb turkey barely fit in our freezer.

While dinner was cooking the kids frosted cookies and we watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving.  Frosting cookies during the Macy Day parade is our usual tradition so we just had to mix it up a little.  They also had a little homework to do, no additional day off tomorrow.  Although they did try to convince me that "no one" was going to school on Thanksgiving.  Considering less than 20% of their school is American I find this unlikely.

Our final dinner consisted of: Turkey, old-fashioned bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, butter-pecan sweet potatoes (these were terrific and a new favorite, for any meal), homemade green bean casserole, gravy, corn, salad, rolls and cranberry sauce.  Well not really the cranberry sauce, we forgot it in the refrigerator so we will have that with our leftovers.  Things can't be perfect.
  
After dinner, the kids did the dishes and I did not help at all.  I loved that.  Truly.  Afterwards we watched a movie and had dessert.  The pies were scrumptious and we all went to bed happy!  

Pies!

While we miss all of our family and friends on this special holiday we are truly thankful for what we have and that we are together.  We wish everyone we know a Happy Thanksgiving and now that we know how to do it in Germany, let us know if you're coming next year!