Thanksgiving Wrap-up

Thanksgiving was more wonderful than I could've hoped for.  It started with me introducing my coworkers to pumpkin pie and culminated in a dinner party that stretched into the early AM.

I called my colleagues to the break room around lunchtime for pie and cookies, and they all dutifully sampled pumpkin pie and chit-chatted about whether they needed a new drill, new samples, etc (geophysicists...). My South African coworker said pumpkin pies are traditional for him too, but that they were different than what I had prepared.  I let him know that American pies aren't exactly like what I prepared either.  The only pumpkin I could find was a jack-o-lantern, so the flavor was a bit watery.

Then (with my boss's permission) I dipped out early to dash home and start cooking.  I got on video-skype with my parents, and it was like we were hosting dueling cooking shows, because I'd be darting on and off screen, furiously whisking a bowl of popover dough, while mom was stirring collard greens and dad was showing off his ambrosia.

One of my roommates decided to roast a chicken after all, so we got dinner on the table a touch later than we had originally planned.  I teased our guests about how we were participating in the annual "waiting for the bird to finish" tradition.  Everyone was surprised at how nicely we had arranged our bleak Soviet-looking apartment.  I was thrilled that we made it look swank using scavenged goods.  Our centerpiece was a massive candelabra that my roommate found when she was walking on Suomenlinna.  I added origami decorations, filling little folded boxes with paper flowers that resembled mandalas.  I also built a pyramid out of stacked origami turkeys.  The finnish text on the paper looked great with the box-pattern.  It was gratifying that our guests appreciated the effort.  My Indian friend's eyes got huge when she saw our table, and she snapped tons of pictures.  The final touch was an evergreen branch that I stuck in an old-fashioned beer bottle.  At the end of the meal we decked it out in candy canes like a Christmas tree to celebrate the start of the holiday season. 

(more after the jump)

It turned into a delightful dinner party, with the very gracious non-Americans gushing about how much they enjoyed the meal and our customs.  In particular, a Vietnamese girl was really cute because she had only ever seen Thanksgiving in movies before, so celebrating with actual Americans was super exciting for her.  We went around the table and said what we were thankful for, and then we kicked off a marathon 7-hour feast.

The head count expanded to 8 people (3 Americans, 1 Latvian, 1 Indian, 2 Scots, and 1 Vietnamese), but we didn't have an issue feeding everyone.  There was plenty of food for all of us to stuff ourselves silly.  We sat down for dinner at around 6:45 pm, and we didn't call it a night until 1:30 in the morning.

We enjoyed lively dinner conversation, but we certainly ate.  Our final menu was: brussels sprouts with pine nuts, green beans, two types of stuffing, mashed potatoes, homemade lingonberry sauce, popovers, sweet potato chevre galette, roast chicken, pumpkin pie, chocolate truffles, chocolate tart with a MASSIVE dollop of whipped cream, and plenty of wine (red, white and glöggi).

One of the Scots was a friend-of-a-friend that a guest picked up from the airport mid-meal.  He had just gotten off the plane, and we immediately sat him down and buried him in food and wine.  By the end of the evening he was part of our little group.  He was just visiting Helsinki for the weekend, but he wanted to make sure that we all hung out together for the few days he has in town.  I really think Thanksgiving can bring out the best- warm and welcoming- side of Americans.  Our new Scottish friend seemed bowled over that he was adopted into our little tradition.

I'll post pictures later.