Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had a really nice holiday. Of course it wasn't the same without my family (and Woo!), and my Mom's cooking, but we enjoyed ourselves.
It is a bit surreal to be celebrating Thanksgiving in the summer time. (For those who don't know, since Lesotho is in the southern hemisphere the seasons are opposite- July is the dead of winter, and January is hot hot hot!)
For Thanksgiving we had over the new group of Peace Corps volunteers, a few old volunteers, and a couple of people from the Embassy. We prob. had a crowd between 30 and 40 people.
I was really looking forward to cooking since we have a cook here so I barely ever cook. I needed to flex my muscles a bit and make sure I had not lost my culinary touch! So I planned the menu, went grocery shopping in South Africa, and created a game plan with our cook Patrick.
After a busy week full of report cards and parent teacher conferences, I began my cooking mission Wednesday evening, took an 8 hour sleeping break, and starting back up at 7am on Thanksgiving.
Here is what was on our menu
YUM! I made the stuffing, green bean casserole, butternut squash pie, pumpkin cake, and Texas sheet cake.
Since I couldn't fine cream of mushroom soup and french's onions, I made homemade green bean casserole instead. And it turned out MUCH better! First I sauteed chopped mushrooms and onions in butter. Next I made a cream sauce out of sour cream and heavy cream, and mixed the mushrooms and onions with the sauce. I seasoned it a bit with garlic and salt. I added green beans (frozen ones that had been thawed) and put the mixture into MANY casserole dishes. When I was cooking the green beans Patrick asked me "Colleen, are you cooking for 40 or 400 people?" Lets just say I overdid it a bit and we will be eating Thanksgiving leftovers for quite some time. I was really afraid of having too little food, so I kind of cooked about 5 times the ammount we really needed.
Instead of the unavaible french's onions, I made a topping of crushed crackers that were mixed with butter, garlic, and seasonings.
I really liked this version better, and plan to make it for Christmas.
I cooked nonstop from 7am to 3pm. Patrick made the turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and apple crumble. He said that he was really impressed by my cooking skills and was suprised with how hard I could work (har har har)!
Everything went smoothly, with only one potential disaster. One of the challenges of living overseas is not being able to find certain food items, and learning the different names for food items. For example confectioners sugar is calling "icing snow" and brown sugar is some word that starts with a "t" that I can't even remember.
So on Wednesday evening I was shopping for all of the food, and there was 10 minutes left until closing time. (The grocery store closes at 7pm, haven't they ever hear of 24 hour Harris Teeters?!) I was having quite a connundrum searching for the heavy cream for the butternut squash pie. Heavy cream was nowhere to be found. I found something called "full cream milk" so I assumed that full cream=heavy cream and put that in my cart. I also saw a container labeled "fresh cream" and there was a picture of whipped cream and strawberries on the cover. I assumed this was whipped cream- and as we all know, pumpkin pie (or in my case, butternut squash pie) needs whipped cream!
Flash forward to Thanksgiving day at about 1pm. I had cooked the squash, mashed it, and mixed all of the ingredients together. Next it was time to mix in the heavy cream. I put the right ammount in, and mixed it all up in hopes to have a smooth concoction. It was completely liquidfied, and was a souplike mixture. I have never made butternut squash pie before, but I could tell that it just didn't look right. I showed Patrick my squash soup and asked him what was up with it. I showed him the "full cream" I used and he started laughing. Apparently full cream= whole milk. Oops. Luckily I am a genuis, so I used a collander to get rid of the damned full cream and was able to salvage the squash and other ingredients. Patrick was going to go out to the store to buy some heavy cream when alas- he looked in the fridge and saw that I did buy heavy cream! Turns out the fresh cream that I believed was whipped cream was actually full cream. Whew. I had *just* enough to make the pie, and it turned out great.
We were this close to eating butternut squash soup.
On to the festivities....
It had been extremely hot all week, and of course on Turkey day the sky threatened rain all day. We had out celebration outside on the patio and the tent, and luckily the weather held up.
We had good food, good company, and a good time. Even Reesey got to hang out, all of the volunteers went gaga over her. They all remarked that it was great to see an actual nice dog in Lesotho. She was pretty well behaved, and is getting a lot better about her fear of strangers.
After we stuffed ourselves silly, we went swimming!
All of the pcv's brought their suits, so when the sun went down we went swimming. We had chicken fights and other types of pool games. The most entertaining one was when people did a running jump into the pool and attempted to catch a beer midair! Hahaha. The new volunteers had an 8pm curfew, but the rest of the vols and myself lingered in the pool until we were waterlogged and the rain finally came down.
All in all it was a special and unique Thanksgiving.
We still have a ton of leftovers, so I am inviting some of the volunteers over for leftovers and swimming- aka Thanksgiving round 2!
Love and miss you all!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had a really nice holiday. Of course it wasn't the same without my family (and Woo!), and my Mom's cooking, but we enjoyed ourselves.
It is a bit surreal to be celebrating Thanksgiving in the summer time. (For those who don't know, since Lesotho is in the southern hemisphere the seasons are opposite- July is the dead of winter, and January is hot hot hot!)
For Thanksgiving we had over the new group of Peace Corps volunteers, a few old volunteers, and a couple of people from the Embassy. We prob. had a crowd between 30 and 40 people.
I was really looking forward to cooking since we have a cook here so I barely ever cook. I needed to flex my muscles a bit and make sure I had not lost my culinary touch! So I planned the menu, went grocery shopping in South Africa, and created a game plan with our cook Patrick.
After a busy week full of report cards and parent teacher conferences, I began my cooking mission Wednesday evening, took an 8 hour sleeping break, and starting back up at 7am on Thanksgiving.
Here is what was on our menu
- Turkey
- Stuffing
- Mashed potatoes
- homemade green bean casserole
- homemade gravy
- cranberry sauce
- cheesy rolls
- Corn on the cobb
- Butternut squash pie
- apple crumble pie
- Pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing
- Texas sheet cake (Grandma Wilson's recipe!)
- Apple crumble
YUM! I made the stuffing, green bean casserole, butternut squash pie, pumpkin cake, and Texas sheet cake.
Preparing the stuffing
Since I couldn't fine cream of mushroom soup and french's onions, I made homemade green bean casserole instead. And it turned out MUCH better! First I sauteed chopped mushrooms and onions in butter. Next I made a cream sauce out of sour cream and heavy cream, and mixed the mushrooms and onions with the sauce. I seasoned it a bit with garlic and salt. I added green beans (frozen ones that had been thawed) and put the mixture into MANY casserole dishes. When I was cooking the green beans Patrick asked me "Colleen, are you cooking for 40 or 400 people?" Lets just say I overdid it a bit and we will be eating Thanksgiving leftovers for quite some time. I was really afraid of having too little food, so I kind of cooked about 5 times the ammount we really needed.
Instead of the unavaible french's onions, I made a topping of crushed crackers that were mixed with butter, garlic, and seasonings.
I really liked this version better, and plan to make it for Christmas.
Nolans do everything in excess!
I cooked nonstop from 7am to 3pm. Patrick made the turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and apple crumble. He said that he was really impressed by my cooking skills and was suprised with how hard I could work (har har har)!
Everything went smoothly, with only one potential disaster. One of the challenges of living overseas is not being able to find certain food items, and learning the different names for food items. For example confectioners sugar is calling "icing snow" and brown sugar is some word that starts with a "t" that I can't even remember.
So on Wednesday evening I was shopping for all of the food, and there was 10 minutes left until closing time. (The grocery store closes at 7pm, haven't they ever hear of 24 hour Harris Teeters?!) I was having quite a connundrum searching for the heavy cream for the butternut squash pie. Heavy cream was nowhere to be found. I found something called "full cream milk" so I assumed that full cream=heavy cream and put that in my cart. I also saw a container labeled "fresh cream" and there was a picture of whipped cream and strawberries on the cover. I assumed this was whipped cream- and as we all know, pumpkin pie (or in my case, butternut squash pie) needs whipped cream!
Flash forward to Thanksgiving day at about 1pm. I had cooked the squash, mashed it, and mixed all of the ingredients together. Next it was time to mix in the heavy cream. I put the right ammount in, and mixed it all up in hopes to have a smooth concoction. It was completely liquidfied, and was a souplike mixture. I have never made butternut squash pie before, but I could tell that it just didn't look right. I showed Patrick my squash soup and asked him what was up with it. I showed him the "full cream" I used and he started laughing. Apparently full cream= whole milk. Oops. Luckily I am a genuis, so I used a collander to get rid of the damned full cream and was able to salvage the squash and other ingredients. Patrick was going to go out to the store to buy some heavy cream when alas- he looked in the fridge and saw that I did buy heavy cream! Turns out the fresh cream that I believed was whipped cream was actually full cream. Whew. I had *just* enough to make the pie, and it turned out great.
We were this close to eating butternut squash soup.
On to the festivities....
It had been extremely hot all week, and of course on Turkey day the sky threatened rain all day. We had out celebration outside on the patio and the tent, and luckily the weather held up.
We had good food, good company, and a good time. Even Reesey got to hang out, all of the volunteers went gaga over her. They all remarked that it was great to see an actual nice dog in Lesotho. She was pretty well behaved, and is getting a lot better about her fear of strangers.
After we stuffed ourselves silly, we went swimming!
All of the pcv's brought their suits, so when the sun went down we went swimming. We had chicken fights and other types of pool games. The most entertaining one was when people did a running jump into the pool and attempted to catch a beer midair! Hahaha. The new volunteers had an 8pm curfew, but the rest of the vols and myself lingered in the pool until we were waterlogged and the rain finally came down.
All in all it was a special and unique Thanksgiving.
We still have a ton of leftovers, so I am inviting some of the volunteers over for leftovers and swimming- aka Thanksgiving round 2!
Love and miss you all!
Me with all of the desserts!
