Barbara, light of my life, fire of my loins
The H-2 extended family has had some pretty eventful American thanksgiving dinners. This is interesting considering plenty of us aren't American. Why do we even bother to continue after situations such as a stolen turkey in first year, nightmares (mine), multiple incidents of salty hot tears (mine), ruined gravy (mine), 40 sweaty and hungry guest in 1 apartment (not ALL mine), and sky high towers of dirty dishes? Madeline and I explained to some acquaintances recently it isn't about celebrating the holiday because of (or lack there of) American citizenship. It's about us getting together as friends, cooking gargantuan amounts of food, wearing holiday sweaters and just having fun. Our friends are our second family in Montreal which I'll admit if you twist my arm.
This year Class Mansion (Becky & Madeline) began the thanksgiving preparations early in advance. We knew we needed to cut the list down a lot. A LOT. We hated the fact that we couldn't invite everyone we wanted. We couldn't even invite half! But as we learned in our second year, holiday dinners need to be kept small if we want to keep our sanity. It's also nice if the dinner can have a cosy, intimate feel. We decided to only invite the friends we see on basically a daily basis, and those who were invited to the first thanksgiving dinner.
For the actual meal the turkey was about 7 kg, as you likely already know assuming you are a dedicated reader and massive fan of this blog. Without asking anyone's permission this year I named her Barbara. In my opinion that is a pleasant and classy name, fit for a Queen among turkeys.
Madeline made one sack of potatoes and cleared Provigo out by buying their entire stock of green beans. I'm serious. She bought them all. THEM ALL!
I stuck to my duties by making 3 loaves of bread worth of stuffing (vegetarian and non) as well as gravy.
Our awesome (and incredibly handy/manly) friend Logan Smith cooked the turkey for us. He even conceded to wearing the apron I brought over for him.
This year the venue was the incredibly exclusive, expensive, super chic and trendy hotspot known as Mike and Ian's basement. They had the largest amount of empty-ish space and they were kind enough to let us use it (after we basically demanded permission). The only problem was that we didn't have a table large enough to accommodate everyone. This is how the table team was born.
Every year we generate a list of items that need to be brought to the dinner like side dishes, cranberry sauce, drinks etc. This year we added "large table" to the list. Kate Bass and Spencer Thompson decided they were man enough for the job. I will admit I had very little, if any faith in the two of them. They had huge plans and grand schemes for constructing a giant table out of plywood and milk crates. As I predicted, this project fell through BUT they did not fail. Their dignity was kept by borrowing kitchen tables from various households and pushing them together. It created one giant Frankenstein table which we poetically covered in the leftover green cloth from my Robin Hood Halloween costume. I'm only poking fun, of course. The basement and table looked lovely.
The food was delicious, and the drinks were plentiful. We even had our annual pre-dinner speech by Michael Brown. This year's speech was surprisingly poignant, dare I say even poetic. After we had eaten a disgusting amount, the "apres dinde" entertainment followed. As seen in the attached video we all joined in a karaoke version of the late 1990s musical masterpiece known as "allstar" by the band Smashmouth. Michael and Ian began DJing the music for us all to dance. This year we were treated with a special swing dancing number by Madeline and Ian. Another attached video shows a small portion of this. Nearer the end of the night we used ichat to call our friend Theo up. He is on exchange in London, England so obviously his attendance this year was out of the question. Theo lived with us on H-2 in first year and along with being one of our best friends, is part of the original thanksgiving family. He knew that he had to be present somehow, even if it was just by video chat. When he answerd the call everyone crowded around, jockeying for a better view. We promptly all began to scream things at him simultaneously. Predictably he didn't understand a word anyone said for about 3 minutes. In any case it was the pièce de résistance of the night.
I'd like to point out at this time that we did not have any thanksgiving disasters! Well, except for one small one. Madeline and our friend Laura accidentally dropped the apple crisp inside of the oven. I walk in on them scrambling madly, attempting to stuff it all back in the pan before anyone noticed. I caught them red handed! It still tasted unbelievable though.
In lieu of disasters, I would like to give you some Thanksgiving Stats from the last three years:
Approximate kg of turkey: 17
bags of potatoes: 4
loaves of bread: 8
numbers of pies: 7
tables used: 6
first time thanksgiving celebrations: 1 (Dora Ladowski, 2007)
facebook event invitations: 3
times Becky has cried: 2
holiday sweaters: TOP SECRET
speeches: 3
times Allstar has been sung: 3
times Genevieve Gittins has actually attended: 0
pairs of swimming goggles utilized: 2 (I can't chop onions without them)
Aprons worn: 9
There is currently no recipe to publish with this post. I have just emailed our friend Sarah Leddin and asked her for her recipe for sweet potato pie. She made it for thanksgiving this year and it was incredible. INCREDIBLE. When she gets back to me I will post it here.
UPDATE: This is the recipe Sarah used
Ingredients
* 4 cups sweet potato, cubed
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 4 tablespoons butter, softened
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
*
* 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
* 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
* 3 tablespoons butter, softened
* 1/2 cup chopped pecans
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Put sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan with water to cover. Cook over medium high heat until tender; drain and mash.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the sweet potatoes, sugar, eggs, salt, butter, milk and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Transfer to a 9x13 inch baking dish.
3. In medium bowl, mix the sugar and flour. Cut in the butter until the mixture is coarse. Stir in the pecans. Sprinkle the mixture over the sweet potato mixture.
4. Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until the topping is lightly brown.
She also had this to say:
"I used a little less sugar I think and put some maple in (because maple syrup is delicious in everything) and used walnuts instead of pecans, but only because pecans are hella expensive, pecans would probably be yummier."
In the end I think we all agreed that this holiday dinner was our best. There isn't any way possible that the event could have gone better. Cross your fingers for us, and pray that next November we manage to pull off an even better thanksgiving. Heres hoping!
xoxo Class Mansion
PS. Here is a photo of the original American Thanksgiving in 2007
PPS. Here is a photo of us playing monopoly at the original American Thanksgiving
PPSS. Here is a photo of the empty bucket after someone stole our turkey in first year.
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