Thanksgiving

It was a while ago - but we've been behind with all the holiday rush. This year we were on our own with Thanksgiving and, due to the aforementioned rush of work and holidays in general, we basically decided to opt out. But, the night before Thanksgiving I was remembering this famous Thanksgiving, 11 years ago in Egypt.


I was touring with a group from my study abroad program and I'd run out of money. I had enough for the exit visa, but that was it. I was literally on a bottled water and bread from the street vendors diet until I got back to Israel. A bunch of us went to the McDonald's in Luxor and my friend, Kristie, bought me an apple pie. It was really sweet.

So this year I was determined not to have a brötchen-oriented Thanksgiving and decided at noon on Thanksgiving that I would actually make a Thanksgiving meal for LUNCH. I had 2 hours before Stefan would be home for lunch, and since that's when we eat our hot meal, that's when it had to happen.

Thankfully I had 2 sweet potatoes from the Chinese grocery on hand, so I baked them in the microwave for 10 minutes while I figured out what else I could do. We actually still had marshmallows from a previous special treat, so I figured I'd make an impromptu sweet potato casserole - awesome! I didn't have any cash, and our ATM was on the other end of town, so I couldn't buy a rotisserie chicken from the chicken lady's stand down the street, so I ran to the nearest grocery store and picked up some turkey schnitzel. At least it was turkey, right?


I sprang 3 Euro for 6 slices of cheddar cheese (the only way to get it here), to make a cheese sauce for the steamed broccoli and cauliflower. I put out the good china on the little kitchen table since the dining room one was covered in Christmas projects already. We almost always drink water, and sometimes juice, so we never buy soda. Stefan remembered we had some cans of ginger ale from our secret American stash in the storage room, so he dug some out and we had something 'special' to drink.

It wasn't fancy, but it was special and it was Thanksgiving.
Turkey schnitzel and all.