Our Danish Thanksgiving - Take 1 & Take 2

Our first Danish Thanksgiving was back in 2002. We had only been in Denmark for 5 months and I remember how award it was to be celebrating a very American holiday far far away from the states. We obviously missed having our family with us, but the thing that made it most awkward and almost isolating was the fact that no one else was celebrating with us. Not WITH us, but "with" us. The day before, the stores weren't overly crowded with people getting their last minute supplies, Thanksgiving day the stores were still open and people were still going to work, there were no advertisements for the "Black Friday" sales, and we weren't the least bit scared of going out into public on Black Friday. It made us feel quite alone. Turkey's were expensive and near impossible to find. We had no stuffing, no cranberry sauce, no pumpkin or pecan pie and no cornbread. I had no mixer, and we didn't have an oven, or a stove. We had a hotplate and we had purchased a "toaster oven" size oven. Michael and I are very good at making every situation that we are in, the absolute best we can. We weren't always like that and I think living abroad the first time, quickly taught us that we had no other choice. Personally I think us learning that life lesson at the young age of 22 was quite an impressive feat.

That Thanksgiving Michael took the day off from school (that sounds better then, Michael skipped class). We found a small whole chicken that would fit in our little tiny oven and I mashed my potatoes in a bowl with a big spoon to make mashed potatoes. We actually had a very fun evening, laughing at our pathetic attempt at our first Thanksgiving out of the country.

Happy Thanksgiving 2002

Our Food.
The bowl of red stuff isn't cranberry sauce, It is cherries in a cherry sauce.

Our very un-American, Danish dessert of "Æbleskiver"
Or as most of my friends back home prefer to call them, Pancake Balls.

Take 2.

This year, was much the same, but much different. The sense of being away at Thanksgiving time is without a doubt in my mind, still the hardest time to be outside of the United States, even more so than Christmas. Michael and his group are on a pretty intense deadline right now, so rather then taking the day off he worked from home. He couldn't make himself go to work on Thanksgiving. Can you blame him?

Rather than celebrate alone, we had 4 friends over for Thanksgiving Dinner (a real Thanksgiving dinner, not that pathetic meal we ate 5 years ago).

We started the evening with some mulled wine.
Klaus, Maja and Flemming

Sarah

Sarah brought us some beautiful Mistletoe.

I had planned on ordering a Turkey from the butcher because I have never ever seen a full turkey in the store. Then one magical day about 2 weeks ago, sitting in the edge of the freezer bins at one of my stores were about 20 frozen turkeys!! SWEET! I went back the next day when I had enough hands to carry one home and got one.

For the first time, I had to make the dressing from scratch. I was weary about this because I have eaten Praters dressing for years and Michael since...forever. If you have lived in Lubbock and have had Praters dressing, you will know, there is nothing on this earth that compares. Needless to say, we both held very low expectations on this recipe I found. We were both VERY surprised that it turned out delicious and actually gave Praters dressing a run for its money.

This was my first year to give cranberry sauce a try from scratch. Michael doesn't like cranberry sauce. Doesn't like it homemade, doesn't like it from a can. He will not eat it...end of story. I found some cranberry's and a cool recipe online which I tweaked it a bit. I made it a day ahead of time and when Michael came home I gave him a little taste and he loved it. He then asked "what is that?" HAHA. When I said cranberry sauce he was shocked. He went back for seconds during our Thanksgiving dinner. I guess thats a recipe that will stay with us for quite a while.

We also had green beans, corn bread, mashed potatoes (which were made by my best friend, my kitchen aid mixer), and Pumpkin Soup (which was the only thing I didn't make, I simply heated it up)

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving Dinner

Michael cutting the turkey

One of the tv stations here was airing the football games of the day live. So after dinner we retreated to watch some good 'ol fashioned Thanksgiving Football.
This is the Packers/Lions Game

Micahel AND Klaus, teaching the Danes the rules of Football.

I couldn't make pumpkin pie because you can't get Pumkin Puree here. I did find some at an American store in Copenhagen, but it was 50Dkk (10 Dollars) a can!!! I thought we would be fine without the Pumpkin Pie. I was going to make a pecan pie, but I couldn't find any corn syrup or pre-shelled pecans. I figured even if I ran across some corn syrup, I would still have to track down pecans, and I wasn't about to shell all the pecans by hand. So, the day before Thanksgiving I was looking through all my cooking light magazines and found a recipe for a good looking "Ginger Cake" It didn't call for any "hard to find"ingrediant it DID require 1/3 cup of Guinness ...so it won. The cream on top is homemade (no cool whip here). It is whipped cream, sugar and whiskey. Michael made me save the left over cream in case he found something today we could eat it on.

My Ginger Cake

Sarah and Me

Maja and Me

Flemming, Michael and Klaus
(These are the other two designers that Michael works with)

We finished watching the game and our guests left, the Cowboys game came on and we watched some of it as we cleaned up all our dirty dishes. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving full of laughs and good friends.

I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving and took out even just a moment of time to think about all the things you are thankful for this year. For me, I'm thankful for our awesome families, our old friends and our new friends, our good health and for this wonderful experience of living abroad again. And yes, I'm even thankful that I have hands and arms to wash our laundry with :)

This morning, I hung the mistletoe in our doorway
So if you want a kiss from me... now is the time to come over and stand under it! ;)