Thursday, November 27 Thanksgiving

Girls have half day, Brian has full day. I'll be cooking a meal for dinner, still depends on what I find at the store today whether we'll have pilic or hindi (chicken or turkey). I've spotted no whole turkeys yet, but we'll see.

Brian and the girls have been playing a lot of World Of Warcraft online and using the computers and bandwidth, so I haven't pushed my way to the front of the queue to post to the blog. Also just haven't been feeling like it, as I haven't done much more than shopping and reading, and that's not real exciting to read about (though it is fairly relaxing--but sometimes panic-driven--for me). Brian's feeling better now, so maybe we'll get to get out and about a bit this weekend.
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Aeden and I went shopping all over for our "fix'ins"...the market for pumpkin, the grocery for chicken or turkey and celery, the toy/supply store for big paper, and the post office to pay our internet bill. I felt like a character in a book shopping at the market the morning of Thanksgiving for my fruits and vegetables.

When the girls got home from school I helped them weave a paper runner of brown and yellow for our Thanksgiving table. I was pretty excited to have realized that I should pick up some large colored paper at the store when Aeden and I were out shopping, and had a very good time setting up the weaving project. My gosh it has been a long time since I've weaved a paper mat!

Our "usual" Thanksgiving menu with our Turkish equivalents:

• Cranberry Juice and 7-Up: Fruitmix Juice 100% "from Red Fruits" mixed with Sprite.
  
• Turkey: Roasted ChickenStuffing: Stuffing with granny smith apples and caramelized onions. And I found celery for the occassion!
  
• Bread: Rye Bread that was the same density as Grandma Suzie's...just not quite as sweet. What a nice surprise!
  
• Pickles and Beyaz Peynir (they have great pickles here!)
  
• Mashed Potatoes: Mashed Potatoes!
  
• Gravy: My first gravy made from scratch. Lacey declared it was "kind of good", but I thought it was great, especially for chicken gravy (I'm a brown gravy fan, myself)
  
• Caramelized Sweet Potatoes: Caramelized pumpkin and roasted pumpkin. Maren loved the caramelized pumpkin and wanted more! Aeden on the other hand gave it one taste and spit it out, not to be touched again.
  
• Dessert: Store-bought Tulumba (churro-like pastries drowning in sweet syrup). Though we ate so late, I was the only one that stayed up and ate any!
  

I stuffed myself on mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy as usual, with some pumpkin on the side. I love a Thanksgiving dinner menu. This was only the second Thanksgiving I can remember not celebrating with more people...for Thanksgiving in Vermont it was just Brian and me and quite memorable. Grandma Suzie had sent me a loaf of rye bread, and we had a can of cranberries, some Stove Top stuffing, and maybe even mashed potatoes. But it was memorable because we were house-sitting in Albany, Vermont, and the kitchen stove was wood-burning, the water undrinkable because of lead pipes in the old house, and the furnace wood burning down in a dirt-floor basement. Nothing like chopping wood in your pajamas in the freezing cold so you could climb back into bed and wait for the house to warm up. It was a wonderful holiday though, as picture perfect as you can imagine Northern Vermont with fresh snow falling.

Our Thanksgiving here was tasty and quiet. Relaxing, but definitely made me miss home and my family the most since we've been here, knowing they were celebrating without us and we weren't able to celebrate with them. It was wonderful to get a call from my mom and to chat with her for a little bit.

Our Thanksgiving Dinner table: