I have been in the US for well over a decade. About 2/3 of all Thanksgivings we spent at other people’s houses, and the rest we either didn’t celebrate very much (e.g., I’d cook some turkey breasts, but not the whole bird), or we simply had a nice, but nontraditional meal (Thanksgiving is often close to DH’s birthday, so I cook his favorite dish, which is from the home country and quite labor intensive).

The last three years we went to friends’ Thanksgiving party. This year our hosts are indisposed, and we decided to stay in and not invite anyone over. Aside from Smurf, the world’s pickiest (and cutest) eater 4 years in a row, the family includes DH and myself, adult carnivores; Eldest, a teenager who swims 4 hours per day; and MB, an 8-year-old who eats (and expends energy) like an NFL linebacker; I figured we needed a whole turkey. Therefore, I decided to attempt a small-scale quasi-traditional Thanksgiving celebration, where “quasi” comes from neither DH nor me having been exposed to this tradition growing up,  all our knowledge thus stemming from what we saw in other’s people’s houses or on the web. However, I generally consider myself a decent self-taught amateur cook (most people are), and with cooking, as with math and science, it you have a solid foundation in the basics and an understanding of how the fundamental building blocks interact, you can confidently embark on a variety of new fields of exploration.

I bought one of the smallest turkeys I could find, about 12 pounds. Since it’s just the family, I didn’t go crazy with the number of side dishes. Below is a picture of the meal (store-bough pumpkin pie and whipped cream we had for dessert not depicted).

Not bad for a first-time Thanksgiving cook, huh? The whole meal took 4 hours  to prepare (+/- 5 min), from when I turned on the oven to preheat it for the turkey, until the moment I took this picture.

The turkey turned out heavenly (simple roasting,  after having been coated in 3 sticks worth of melted butter; the cavity was filled with herbs, carrots, apples, and onions). The gravy (we obviously don’t own a gravy boat) was absolutely perfect in both texture and taste, and is probably my favorite part of the dinner; all that butter made for a phenomenal base. I don’t care for stuffing and have never understood the appeal, so I didn’t make any. The cranberry sauce was very simple and delicious, and a big hit with Eldest and DH. The mashed potatoes and stir-fried green beans are dishes I make often, and the gravy nicely played up both. The roasted yellow-flesh sweet potatoes with onions were OK, but would have probably been better with yams (in case you didn’t know, both sweet potatoes and what we call yams in the US are just varieties of the sweet potato, while true yams are something very different). MB was excited, “Finally, we have a normal Thanksgiving meal!”

Overall, it was yummy and we have enough left over for dinner today, and possibly a day or two beyond with some additional items. Aaaand, the cooking took about as much time as I usually spend when we have another family over, which is a great plus considering that I get no pleasure from slaving away in the kitchen for hours on end.  I consider this little experiment a tasty step in DH’s and my continued assimilation.