More about Thanksgiving

Our thanksgiving dinner became a rather complicated story as it turned out several of the chemistry boys didn't have any plans for the big day. Therefore we arranged a potluck dinner in Ralph's (the new German Ph.D. student) studio.

Since 3/4 of the guests were non-Americans we got some instructions from Ralph's American girl friend regarding the authentic menu. After tasting it she concluded that we all did fine.

We had:

Turkey - Ben had purchased a 14 lb bird which according to internet-turkey-calculators should be able to feed about 20 people, but we didn't really have any leftovers. Cooking time: 5 hours.

'Stuffing' - bread cubes, walnuts, raisins, celery, olives and onion which contrary to expectation were prepared outside the turkey. Inside the turkey there were stuffed carrots.

Green bean casserole - baked in the oven, made from green beans in cream of mushroom. Very nice, and we didn't know this existed at all.

Mashed potatoes - Tue was in charge of this part and made a version with scallions and sour cream.

Cranberry sauce and brown gravy - contrary to our expectation the cranberry sauce was cold and shaped like the can it came in. Tue made a nice brown gravy - fluid and warm - from the turkey drippings.

Corn bread and ordinary bread - corn bread is somewhat like muffins (and a little sweet). Zarko made the wheat bread himself.

Eggnog - before we got the real desserts this curious drink was put on the table. We don't think we'll adopt this tradition!

Pumpkin pie and cheesecake - the pumpkin pie of course being the authentic dessert, but since Tue is well aware of Lisbeth's reservations towards this vegetable he had suggested that she made a cheesecake as alternative dessert. Both Ben and Martin were very happy about this. We noticed that there was some leftover pumpkin pie..

To all this Caroline and Martin had brought some nice wines, amongst others the popular Coppola red wine :-)

It was nice evening, even though we still don't understand why this day - when one gratefully commemorates that the first settlers survived the first winter on food donated by the native Americans - has to be celebrated, when one thinks of how they were thanked in the years that followed...