Thanksgiving
What an original title.
Today was awesome! We woke up kind of late to a beautiful sunny morning. My brother's friend came over and he and my brother and sister and I sat around and ate cereal (and baklava I brought home from work last night...) and caught up on life. Then we decided to go out for a quick cup of coffee/tea before getting ready for the festivities of the day.
In the afternoon my siblings and I ate with my dad and his wife and his side of the extended family, then we went over to my uncle's house to celebrate with my mom's side of the family. I ate enough to kill a small horse, but it was worth it. After dinner we went down to my uncle's movie room and watched a documentary - I think it was maybe called The Endurance - about the Arctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. We had a good time.
A few weeks ago I was having dinner with some friends and the topic of holidays overseas came up. Someone asked me where we got our turkey last year and as I told them I realized it was kind of unusual. Our boss in Zagreb has some kind of underground turkey connection so he got this enormous bird and sent it to us (frozen, I think?) in a huge duffel bag via bus - unaccompanied by a human. It actually did not fit in our oven, so we went to the bakery down the street and tried to explain in very broken Croatian that there was this holiday and this big bird, and could we use their oven? Amazingly, they agreed. We stuffed and prepared it, then lugged it to it's fiery destiny, where it cooked in about 2 hours flat. The cooking time was probably sped up due to the fact that they had to kind of smash it/lay it open for it to fit in the narrow-but-wide bread oven, and we were just grateful that it worked. Carrying it back with all the juices threatening to pour out of the pan was quite a challenge, but definitely worth it.
I guess I am just grateful for two great (though drastically different) years of Thanksgiving in a row.
Today was awesome! We woke up kind of late to a beautiful sunny morning. My brother's friend came over and he and my brother and sister and I sat around and ate cereal (and baklava I brought home from work last night...) and caught up on life. Then we decided to go out for a quick cup of coffee/tea before getting ready for the festivities of the day.
In the afternoon my siblings and I ate with my dad and his wife and his side of the extended family, then we went over to my uncle's house to celebrate with my mom's side of the family. I ate enough to kill a small horse, but it was worth it. After dinner we went down to my uncle's movie room and watched a documentary - I think it was maybe called The Endurance - about the Arctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. We had a good time.
A few weeks ago I was having dinner with some friends and the topic of holidays overseas came up. Someone asked me where we got our turkey last year and as I told them I realized it was kind of unusual. Our boss in Zagreb has some kind of underground turkey connection so he got this enormous bird and sent it to us (frozen, I think?) in a huge duffel bag via bus - unaccompanied by a human. It actually did not fit in our oven, so we went to the bakery down the street and tried to explain in very broken Croatian that there was this holiday and this big bird, and could we use their oven? Amazingly, they agreed. We stuffed and prepared it, then lugged it to it's fiery destiny, where it cooked in about 2 hours flat. The cooking time was probably sped up due to the fact that they had to kind of smash it/lay it open for it to fit in the narrow-but-wide bread oven, and we were just grateful that it worked. Carrying it back with all the juices threatening to pour out of the pan was quite a challenge, but definitely worth it.
I guess I am just grateful for two great (though drastically different) years of Thanksgiving in a row.
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