Thanksgiving, Expat Style

(Pictured here: Carlos, Isaac (our roommate), Ana, and Natalie.

(Pictured here: Blake, Lauren, and the Spanish Turkey.

As Thanksgiving is unfortunately not recognized as a work holiday in Spain, I had to work all day long on the 27th of November. So, we tackled a delayed dinner this weekend.

Craig and I discovered a store in Madrid called, no joke, "The American Store," where we were able to find (outrageously expensive) canned pumpkin pie filling and cranberry sauce (because, it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a bowl of canned cranberry sauce that nobody touches). At the Corte Ingles, a large department and grocery store chain here in Spain, we were able to find 4 dusty, unripe little sweet potatoes, some salted pecans, and, lo and behold, tucked in amongst the sheep brains and cow tongues, a turkey!

After the initial shock of paying 70 euro for the bird (granted, it WAS 19 lbs) we were faced with a slew obstacles: missing ingredients, oven malfunctions, a shortage of dishes, too-old yeast, a kitchen too cold for the bread dough to rise, conversion issues, a broken refrigerator, no storage space, no roasting pans, dull knives. Poor Craig was sent to the store no less than four times as our tiny, freezing kitchen was transformed into a laboratory of Thanksgiving experimentation. I wanted to make my family's traditional cornbread and sausage stuffing, but what to do without Jimmy Dean and Jiffy? We had our pie filling, but how to make pie without pie pans? What to do when your oven reads only 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 instead of degrees? Our Southern friend Lauren and I worked most of the day in the kitchen, checking the not-so-successfully-rising bread dough, greasing pans with butter and our fingertips instead of non-stick cooking spray, inventing new twists on our American family recipes.

We ended up with a spectacular feast that any American would be happy to partake in, particularly an American missing a holiday exclusive to our country—or their Spanish friends that want to try to understand the appeal of turkey and stuffing. We had a lovely, juicy turkey thanks to Lauren and Blake, the closest version of Momma’s stuffing I could fix, mashed potatoes (hand-squished with a fork by Craig), mushroom gravy, sweet potato casserole, fruit salad, yeast rolls, green bean casserole (brought by our American friend Natalie), cranberry sauce straight out of the can, my (pretty darn impressive) pumpkin pies, brownies (again, brought by Natalie via posted brownie mix straight from the states), lemon and chocolate cake homemade by our Spanish friend, Ana, lots of wine from our Spanish guests, and sweet tea!

It tasted like home.

To help us celebrate, we tried to watch American football. Unfortunately, we could not get the Alabama/Auburn game on the internet. This was especially sad because we actually had a graduate from each school here in our Spanish apartment! We were able to watch a few other games, though, and the SEC spirit ran hot through the piso. We did track the AL/AUB game online, and we are very pleased with the results. Roll Tide!


Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all, from Spain!