Thanksgiving in Peru
Happy Thanksgiving all! (a day late)
We worked a regular day yesterday, but managed to pull together quite an impressive approximation of the good 'ol 'merican Thanksgiving dinner for 65 people.
The menu consisted of turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, quiche for vegetarians, and pumpkin pie, apple pie, and a strawberry banana trifle. (I know strawberries aren't traditional, but they're only 70 cents a kilo. C'mon.)
My favorite was the pumpkin pie, which was quite impressive because all they have here is a big yellow pumpkin-squashy type thing. With the addition of cream, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, etc. (all of which came in whole form and needed to be pulverized with the broken-off sledgehammer heads which litter our yard), it tasted amazing.
We purchased two 12kilo turkeys which were freshly killed that morning, and baked them in the oven of a local bakery. All of the Peruvians we consulted with were absolutely convinced that it would only take two hours to cook the birds. Two hours later, they concurred that yes, yes, the turkeys absolutely needed to be baked longer.
For cranberries, we pulled some Peace Corps strings and plucked the last six cans from the shelves of the commissary in Lima. The rest of the sides weren't too hard to do; the produce here is awesome.
While there's a lot of Americans here right now there are just as many, if not more, people from other countries. "Ooh, my first Thanksgiving!" One of them asked what songs we sing. "Umm.... we kind of just sit around eat...and that's it."
Prepping the meal was a two-day ordeal, and we still didn't end up serving until 8:30PM. All the volunteers were amazingly patient though. Usually, we have dinner and a meeting and then everyone goes off to do their own thing. This night, dinner was the thing, so it was neat to see everyone just hanging out and having fun at base.
We invited Gisela and Carolina, the ladies who usually do our cooking, to have dinner with us. Cranberry sauce was their favorite, followed by the desserts. They teased that everything was delicious, but next time, we should try to have the meal ready by 6PM (we always press them to have dinner ready early). Fatima, Gisela's five-year-old daughter, liked the turkey the best.
I think it's my third holiday season in a row away from home, and I'm starting to miss the friends, family get-togethers, being in SF, and dumplings and noodles at Thanksgiving (hey, we're Chinese, that's how we do). I also realize how lucky I've been, to travel to different places and get to do exciting work at the same time. Ah wells. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
We worked a regular day yesterday, but managed to pull together quite an impressive approximation of the good 'ol 'merican Thanksgiving dinner for 65 people.
The menu consisted of turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, quiche for vegetarians, and pumpkin pie, apple pie, and a strawberry banana trifle. (I know strawberries aren't traditional, but they're only 70 cents a kilo. C'mon.)
My favorite was the pumpkin pie, which was quite impressive because all they have here is a big yellow pumpkin-squashy type thing. With the addition of cream, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, etc. (all of which came in whole form and needed to be pulverized with the broken-off sledgehammer heads which litter our yard), it tasted amazing.
We purchased two 12kilo turkeys which were freshly killed that morning, and baked them in the oven of a local bakery. All of the Peruvians we consulted with were absolutely convinced that it would only take two hours to cook the birds. Two hours later, they concurred that yes, yes, the turkeys absolutely needed to be baked longer.
For cranberries, we pulled some Peace Corps strings and plucked the last six cans from the shelves of the commissary in Lima. The rest of the sides weren't too hard to do; the produce here is awesome.
While there's a lot of Americans here right now there are just as many, if not more, people from other countries. "Ooh, my first Thanksgiving!" One of them asked what songs we sing. "Umm.... we kind of just sit around eat...and that's it."
Prepping the meal was a two-day ordeal, and we still didn't end up serving until 8:30PM. All the volunteers were amazingly patient though. Usually, we have dinner and a meeting and then everyone goes off to do their own thing. This night, dinner was the thing, so it was neat to see everyone just hanging out and having fun at base.
We invited Gisela and Carolina, the ladies who usually do our cooking, to have dinner with us. Cranberry sauce was their favorite, followed by the desserts. They teased that everything was delicious, but next time, we should try to have the meal ready by 6PM (we always press them to have dinner ready early). Fatima, Gisela's five-year-old daughter, liked the turkey the best.
I think it's my third holiday season in a row away from home, and I'm starting to miss the friends, family get-togethers, being in SF, and dumplings and noodles at Thanksgiving (hey, we're Chinese, that's how we do). I also realize how lucky I've been, to travel to different places and get to do exciting work at the same time. Ah wells. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
posted by Stefanie at 9:15 AM
1 Comments:
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