An International Thanksgiving

As my cousin Erik once said, "Some people die and go to Heaven.  But when someone in our family dies, they go to Thanksgiving."  I am pretty sure Erik was right about this.  

For the past 28 years, I have spent every Thanksgiving with my huge and wonderful family.  Thanksgiving and the Wednesday before it are hands-down, my absolute favorite days of the entire calendar year.  The Wednesday before is a highlight because I always spend it at Aunt Connie's house helping prepare the feast with my cousin Cindy.  When my grandmother was alive she used to orchestrate the whole thing and I have memories of her sitting at the table directing each of us while carefully picking the meat off of the turkey neck and adding it to the stuffing.  When she thought no one was looking, she would sneak little bites for herself.  She used to chop the celery with a tiny paring knife into the most precise little cubes.  Now Grandma watches over the process as Aunt Connie commands the kitchen with admirable efficiency and grace.   And Wednesday would not be complete without the legitimate fear of a pressure cooker explosion sure to splatter turkey giblets all over the kitchen.

Last Thanksgiving went down in history as the best day of my life because just before the meal, in front of 39 members of my family as well as Fritz's parents and brother, Fritz got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  

Obviously Fritz and I are together in Germany this year, where Thursday, November 26th will be no  more significant to the locals than Thursday, November 19th.  We knew one of the sacrifices of this adventure in Germany was going to be missing American Thanksgiving, and I knew it would likely be one of the hardest parts about being away.  I'm not usually one to get homesick.  I love my home and I love my family more than I have words to express, but I tend to focus my energy on the cool things I am seeing and doing rather than the things I am missing.  But every time I thought about missing Thanksgiving, a little knot got all caught up in my throat.  

We decided the best thing to do was turn Thanksgiving into an opportunity to share our favorite holiday with the people who have mattered to us here in Germany.  So, please read as I outline...

30 Simple Steps to Pull Off an American Thanksgiving in Germany!

Step 1: 

Invite all of your friends.  For us, this means Mikko (our Finnish AirBnB buddy and housing savior) as well as Johanna, Frederic, and Carl (our three favorite German grad student pals).  

Step 2: 

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, reserve a turkey at the public market where the best poultry vendor in Frankfurt has a shop.  When I went, I was prepared with the German word for turkey, Truthahn, but you should also know how to convert kilos to pounds quickly so you don't end up with a turkey that looks like it ate another turkey.  I was not ready with the kilo-to-pounds conversion and got nervous when the turkey lady started throwing out numbers so I quickly settled on the first number she said.  8 kilos.  Great.

Well, maybe not so great.  For those of you not familiar with the metric system, 8 kilos is nearly 18 pounds!  Oh and I forgot to mention, one of our Thanksgiving guests is a vegetarian.  This means over 3 pounds of Truthahn per person!  

Step 3: 

Acquire the proper cookware.  Our little apartment came equipt with the basics, but certainly not enough to pull off a Thanksgiving feast.  Mikko and Johanna came to our rescue, each lending several casserole dishes and baking pans!

Step 4:

Create a Thanksgiving Menu.  Here's mine:  

Appetizers

Assorted Cheeses 

Bread

Crackers

Grapes

Main Course

Turkey (duh)

Gravy

Mashed Potatoes 

Grandma's Sausage Stuffing

Kale Sauteed with Bacon and Onions

Savory Roasted Sweet Potatoes 

Beet and Arugula Salad

Desert

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Crumble Pie

Step 5:

One or two days before Thanksgiving, go to the grocery store so you can buy all the stuff you need for this rather ambitious menu.  For the stuffing, I got 4 mini bags of "Breakfast Butter Bread," which looked a lot like plain white bread to me.  They don't make Wonderbread in Germany in case you were wondering.  Finding the right sausage for the stuffing was interesting because the Germans have like 103 different kinds of sausage.  In the US you just get the uncased pork sausage.  There's like one option and that's it.  Hopefully, I picked the right one.  Basic veggies are the same really. There are plenty of potatoes in Germany so that wasn't a problem.  But then I started to hit some road blocks.  

Step 6:

Change your menu based on what is available in the German grocery store.  I learned that Germans don't do pie.  They don't even have a word for pie!  They don't sell pie crust in the store and good luck finding those cans of pumpkin goop that you use to make the pumpkin pie.  Clearly I had to rethink the dessert plan.  Apple Crisp became a viable substitution, although they don't really have brown sugar for the crumbs.  More like raw cane sugar that is a brown color.  I didn't think that will matter too much though.  You mix it with flour and butter and no one is going to complain.  I also could not find anything that resembled poultry seasoning, so a combination of Salbei and Thymian (that's sage and thyme) would have to do.

Great.  Now you have everything.  Go to the checkout counter and pay for all this stuff.

Step 7:

Awkwardly walk down the street with four giant bags of groceries to get to your apartment building which is 5 blocks away.  Once you get there, fumble for your keys and unlock the door without dropping any of your bags.  Remember, there are eggs in there.  Now climb the 80 (yes 80) steps to your top floor apartment.  

Step 8:

Drink a glass of water, because those steps were a workout!

Step 9: 

Unpacked your groceries and set up your Bread Staler.  It was quite fortuitous that our apartment came with its very own Bread Staler.  The annual problem we have at Aunt Connie's is that the bread is never stale enough to make the stuffing. We often end up toasting it in the oven to dry it out at the last minute, but this year, all my staling problems were solved. 

Ta-da!  Ok so it's actually a clothes drying rack, but it doubles really well as a bread staler, don't you think?  

Step 10: 

Go pick up the turkey.  When I got to the market, I explained that I had reserved a bird 2 weeks ago.  As soon as I said my name the German lady just started yelling at me!  She kept waving the paper I had written my name and phone number on saying in broken English that she had been calling me and calling me all morning.  Apparently my number was incorrect.  Oops!  She was calling because the turkey ended up being only 6 kilos instead of 8.  I couldn't have been happier about that.  6 kilos is closer to 14 pounds which is much more reasonable for 5 people to share.  But the turkey lady was really quite upset about the whole thing.  

Step 11: 

Apologize to the turkey lady for giving her the wrong phone number.  Luckily we were able to put that foul matter behind us and ended the turkey exchange on a very positive note.  I even bought some extra chicken broth to brighten her up a bit. 

Step 12:

Realize that there is no stinkin' way this 6-kilo turkey is going to fit in any baking pan you have at home.  

Step 13:

Go hunting for a proper roasting pan.  In my case, it didn't make sense to go all the way back home to deposit the bird, so my turkey and I went trotting all over Frankfurt in search for a pan.  After 3 different stores and no luck, I finally asked a mommish-looking lady if she had any idea where I could buy a pan.  This was a bit of an experience because she didn't speak very much English.  Here I was in the middle of a store basically playing Charades with a stranger as I gesticulated putting an invisible roast pan into an imaginary oven.  Remind me never to put this lady on my Charades team because despite my very good acting, she just wasn't getting it.  Finally, I gave up and pulled my dead turkey out of the bag to show her what I was talking about.  Breakthrough!  She knew what I needed, but she had no idea where to buy a roasting pan.  But now she was on a mission to help me.  She hunted down a second lady and explained my situation to her in German.  The second lady knew where I could go, but also did not speak any English.  She found a man, explained the situation to him and he basically just pointed out the window to a department store down the street.  Then both ladies passed my phone back and forth typing in suggested brand names for good roasting pans.  Teamwork makes the dream work people.

Step 14:

Go get that roasting pan!  I rode the escalator with my turkey in tow up to the 5th floor of the department store where I secured a sizable roasting pan.  It even came with a free spatula.  Joy!  Time to go home and start cooking. 

Step 15:

Realize that you live in Germany and you have a tiny kitchen and a German refrigerator which is like half the size of an American fridge.  The turkey basically occupied 50% of the available fridge real-estate.  Serious strategizing is the only way to pull off this meal.  Usually at Aunt Connie's, we cook one turkey, make the stuffing and the potatoes all on the day before Thanksgiving.  I was planning on doing this too, but then I remembered Aunt Connie has two American-sized refrigerators and an entire porch to keep things cold.  She also has a big enough oven to warm multiple dishes at once the day of Thanksgiving.  Our oven can barely accommodate our turkey never mind multiple casserole dishes.  

Step 16: 

Figure out what you can cook in advance.  To make this determination, you must consider things that will not need to be refrigerated or will occupy only a very small portion of the fridge.  I decided I could do the apple crisp and make the stock for the gravy.  

Step 17:

Make the stock.  This is what will later be used for the gravy and the stuffing.  At Aunt Connie's, we make the stock by putting all the giblets in the pressure cooker with celery and onions and a little water.  Well, when I reached into my turkey's fanny in search of the giblets, the only thing waiting for me was the turkey's neck!  I guess the Germans don't like turkey liver pate.  Also, I didn't have a pressure cooker.  Slow cooking the stock this year.   

Step 18:

Since you really can't cook anything else tonight, clean your house so it looks pretty for your guests.  

Step 19:

Go to sleep.

Step 20:

Wake up!  It's Thanksgiving!  There is a lot of stuff to do!  Luckily, no one cares about Thanksgiving in Germany, which means no one has off from work, which means none of our guest will be arriving until at least 7pm, which means plenty of time for cooking.  What  luxury!

Step 21:

Start the day off right with a Turkish Döner.  They are made with chicken but the whole "Turkish" thing seemed appropriate on Turkey-Day.  

Step 22: 

Go back to the grocery store to buy all the stuff you forgot the day before.  

Step 23: 

Prepare your bird for roasting.  

If it's your first time cooking a turkey, you might want to consult Aunt Connie and Fritz's dad for tips that the internet doesn't provide.  My favorite new trick is to cut carrots in half longways and lay them on the bottom of the roasting pan.  That way the turkey can perch on top of them allowing air and juices to flow underneath.  The carrots also prevent the turkey from getting totally stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Thanks for that trick Mr. B!  Also, do American turkey's usually come with all the feathers fully plucked?  Because I definitely had to do some extra plucking on my German guy.  

Step 24: 

Put the turkey in the oven and set the timer for 3 hours (if you have a 6-kilo bird).  Every 45 minutes you are going to have to drizzle the turkey with its own juices so set a second timer for that.    

Step 25: 

Ask Fritz to brown the sausage for the stuffing.

Step 26:

Ask your cousin Cindy to scanned pages from Aunt Connie's Thanksgiving Bible associated with Grandma's Sausage Stuffing recipe.  I will treasure this recipe for as long as I live!  Definitely my absolute favorite dish of the Thanksgiving meal.  You are going to have to get your hands dirty when you make it so just suck it up.  It's going to taste great!

Step 27: 

Ask Fritz to peel all of the potatoes with the poor-excuse-for-a-peeler that came with your tiny kitchen apartment.  Sorry about that Fritz, but you sure look good peeling those spuds!

Step 28:

Use a meat thermometer to determine when the Turkey is done.  Since you are in Germany, you want the meat thermometer to say at least 73.89 degrees Celcius.  Take the tin foil off the turkey at the end so his little turkey skin can get all crispy.  

Browned to perfection!  Well done.  

Step 29: 

While waiting for  your guests to arrive, cue up the football game.  For some, Thanksgiving means food with family and friends.  But for others, Thanksgiving means food with FOOTBALL!  In Germany, the games start a lot later since we are 6 hours ahead of the East Coast.  

Step 30:

Open the door when your friends arrive!  You did it!  Now it's time to enjoy the feast!

By 8:15pm we each went down the buffet and filled our plates! 

We sat down and I had every intention of explaining the origins and meaning of Thanksgiving.  I was going to go into the Pilgrims and Indians and blah blah blah.  I started off strong thanking everyone for coming.  I told them that Thanksgiving was my absolute favorite holiday and that this is the first time I was not celebrating it with my family.  I tried to express how thankful Fritz and I both were to be sharing our traditions with our new friends, but I just got all blubbery and my eyes started leaking all over the place.  Gosh, how embarrassing!  I guess I'm just not cut out for making sentimental speeches.  Especially when I am missing my family.  I ended my toast with a "Happy Thanksgiving," we clinked our glasses and dove in!  

I have to say, we might have been eating a German bird a million miles from Aunt Connie and Uncle Doug's house, but it sure tasted just like home!  And I think our friends had fun too! 

Here is the whole gang as the tryptophan was starting to settle in.  Everyone stayed and chatted for a while.  Johanna brought the most amazing chocolate mousse for desert.  Unfortunately the party had to end because unlike in the US, everyone here had to wake up for work the following morning.  Well.... almost everyone.  

The night ended and the next day began with two super fans glued to the Green Bay Packers game.  Fritz and Carl watched football allllll night long, saying their goodbyes at 6am after a heartbreaking loss.  Now that is commitment! 

Aside from the Packers sad defeat, I'd say Fritz and I had a pretty successful German Thanksgiving!  Thank you to our friends who came to share it with us!  And thank you to our families who taught us this beautiful tradition and gave us so much to be grateful for!