Ein deutsches Thanksgiving

We, being myself, Molly, the other members of JYM and more than a few visitors, celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. Yes, I know that is was a day late, but we were making due. People had classes on Thursday, and the lack of Saturday classes permitted a holiday level of drinking that might otherwise be avoided on a weeknight, helped along by a generous preparation of Glühwein, which is, as far as I can tell, mulled wine.

Amazingly enough for over twenty college students working mostly independently of one another, the dinner was pulled off quite well. Yes, the original plan was to start dinner at 4:30 and was pushed back to past 6 because of the turkey cooking team's realization the morning of Thanksgiving that they the grocery shopping team had bought them two turkeys and there was only one oven, but that worked out. Other people, unprepared for how long some recipes would actually take, came in late and the food still all ended up being warm and tasty. All of the standards were there too. The ingredients for mashed potatoes and and stuffing were easy enough to pull off, but canned cranberries and pumpkin pie mix had to be brought back from the States by a JYM student who went back for a visit this past weekend. Finding a reasonably-priced and sized turkey apparently was a bit of a feat, but Molly was more in on that than I. Otherwise, my contribution was two plates of cornbread (quickly becoming one of my favorite recipes because of its ease, speed and variability) and the gravy. Very happy with my first try at gravy. A little thick, yes, but it looked a lot like gravy. That was helped greatly along by the impartation to me that the secret to a good roux, the butter/flour base of gravy, is to stir in only a single direction.

Personally I most enjoyed the opportunity to share Thanksgiving with our four German visitors and single Estonian, especially since two of them are majoring in American studies. (I hear that over a 1,000 students are enrolled in that institute. Who would have thought?) The whole idea of a holiday is often quite different from its practice, and Thanksgiving does have the distinction of being a very American holiday.

For those returning to Gonzaga, I hope these last fews weeks of the semester do not prove too stressful. Otherwise, I'll be seeing most of you in a little under two months now.

Tschüß.