An Untraditional Thanksgiving

For all of my international friends, Thanksgiving is a wonderful American holiday that consists of friends and family getting together and eating copious amounts of very good food. The traditional Thanksgiving, the one only a few of my friends actually have, is the whole family at one house eating turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. There are variations of these foods, and at some houses children get to sit at their own kid’s table, but pretty much everyone serves the same thing and the family gathers to give thanks for all their blessings this year. Other traditional traditions are: people watching the Macy’s Day parade on television (or in person if they live in New York), men watching the Cowboys and Lions play (not each other) while women wrestle with turkeys in the kitchen, friends playing American football in the afternoon (I am glad we don’t have that tradition as it was the season’s first snow), families playing board games after dinner, and everyone drinking quite a bit.

Before I tell you about my untraditional Thanksgiving, I should also elaborate on the night before, and the morning after Thanksgiving. The holiday is always held on the 4^th Thursday of the November, making the 4^th Wednesday the biggest drinking night of the year. This is because everyone knows they have the next day off work, so they meet up with their buddies at the local tavern and drink more beers than you can imagine. Unfortunately, this also makes it one of the most dangerous nights of the year, as there are drunk drivers left and right. Then everyone fights a hangover with fattening foods and more alcohol, before passing out in front of the fireplace. Well, perhaps the people who live down in Florida pass out in front of palm trees, I don’t know. We have snow here so we have fireplaces. Then crazy people wake up insanely early to participate in Black Friday.

Black Friday is always the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year it was also my 25^th birthday woohoo! Different story though. Getting back on track, Black Friday is one of the best – and scariest – days of the year. Stores open anywhere between 3-5am (yes, as in when all the Europeans are still out clubbing) and people literally trample others to get to TVs, IPads, and digital cameras first. There are amazing deals on everything from electronics to furniture, and people can save a lot of money if they are very invested in the Black Friday experience. I used to shop for clothes on Black Friday, but those deals aren’t nearly as good as ones on flat screen TVS and new cars. And I’m not kidding – people actually stampede into stores for these deals. See the video below that someone shot at Best Buy (an electronics store) this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZJVZ2p223o&feature=fvwk

So that pretty much sums up a traditional Thanksgiving in the U.S. I got a bit off track though, as I was planning to write about my own, untraditional Thanksgiving. I live with my mom and we are the only two people in our family who live in the Midwest (aka we live about a 3 hour plane ride form anyone else in the family). We celebrate Thanksgiving with our neighbors and the rest of the guest list changes each year. This time it was us, our neighbors, another set of family friends, and our neighbors’ daughter and son-in-law. So unlike everyone who relies on their giant families for a huge Thanksgiving dinner, we always have a nice mixture of friends and family. It’s been like this as long as I can remember; the friends change with who is available each year, but it always a wonderful group and everyone has a great time. Let’s move on to the food. Unlike the turkey and stuffing of the traditional holiday, we serve lobster tails and steak cuts instead. This year we had grilled lobster tails, a huge beef roast, homemade squash biscuits (my favorite), and multiple salads. For dessert we had champagne with homemade pumpkin pie (made from a real roasted pumpkin!), walnut pie, and homemade apple cake. Oh, and homemade whipped cream! As in she said, hang on let me get the whipped cream, and 5 minutes later, instead of her returning with a spray can of it, we hear the mixer whirring. She literally disappeared into the next room and made her own whipped cream. Then she served coffee, which everyone promptly added Crown, Baileys, or Frangelico to. All in all, it was fantastic! Here are some photos from the day:

The Dinner Table

Grilled Lobster Tails

Our house with a dusting of snow

I hope all my American and Canadian (but yours was earlier, right?) Thanksgivings were as wonderful as mine was. We were blessed with a beautiful snow, the first of the season, and as we live next door, we were also blessed with being able to totter home after all the food and drinks. To my international friends, I think you should all spend a day having a Friendsgiving. This is when you invite all of your friends over and everyone brings a dish to share. You could keep to our traditional foods if you want, but you could also make it whatever theme you would like. Thanksgiving is all about spending time with loved ones – while consuming mass quantities of delicious food. So make a guest list, tell everyone to bring something whether it be wine or dessert, and have a fabulous day remembering how lucky you are to have friends and family in your life.