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Published: November 26th 2008
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First, to answer all the questions, we had Thanksgiving dinner here in Rome on Sunday. Yes, it was a few days before Thanksgiving in America, but since it's not a holiday here, we needed to do it on a weekend when we were all off from work.
Now, let's begin this story with how you go about getting a turkey in this country. In Italy, they don't eat very much poultry, and definitely not turkey. So, we enlisted Davide's help in securing us a turkey from "his favorite butcher" near his father's house. So, on Saturday (after much confusion due to the language barrier) Jen and I trekked our way out to outskirts of the city limits to fetch our turkey. When we arrived at the butcher shop we were instantly intimidated. The butcher in America scares me a little bit. I am definitely scared of the butcher in this country. How am I supposed to know what to ask for? Sure I know my words for meat, poultry and the verb "to cut" and the word for "a slice". But when you walk into the shop and there are WHOLE chickens, ducks, cornish hens, and pigs, it's a bit
odd to see. I'm not even joking when I tell you they were whole: beaks, feet, that crazy red thing on the chicken's head, eyes...everything. And of course, all the internal organs were still intact. So, now, we don't see ANY turkeys except for this one sign that said "petto tacchino" which we thought meant "a whole turkey". There were these smaller birds there that did not resemble a turkey, but what do we know, we never saw an Italian turkey before. So, in our best Italian, we managed to ask for two turkeys (thinking those small birds were tiny turkeys). The butcher looked like he just heard the craziest thing in his life. He raised his eyebrows and said, "Adesso? Stasera? No, non fino a martedi." Which means, "Now, are you crazy? Not until Tuesday for a whole turkey." Hmmm, ok. Now what? So, he tells us that he had 1 whole turkey which had been reserved (or "booked" if you talk to Davide). We ask to see it. He pulls out the largest turkey I've ever seen in my life. It was 12 kilos, which is about 27 lbs. I don't know where we would have cooked this
turkey because we have what seems to be the equivalent of an easy-bake oven. Jen, in a surprised voice (I was still in shock), asked how much it cost. Well, it was 95 euro. Yes, that's right, 95 euro for a turkey. No thank you!
We decide to check one other butcher and if we had no luck, we were eating chicken. I felt terrible considering Dario was so excited about trying his first turkey. Luckily we found two whole turkey breasts at the butcher down the road from us. We found out that "petto" means "breast". They were different sized breasts, but hey, it was something. Since we couldn't get a full turkey we figured that the breasts would have to do and we'd supplement it with chickens. We went to the grocery store and found that they had pieces of turkey. So, in the end, we had a full turkey. We had to buy all the pieces separately, but we had two breasts, two thighs, two legs, and two wings. Overall, I think it came to 6 kilos (13 lbs) but it fed everyone and we have leftovers. Of course the turkey was not cheap still. It
was 45 euros. I guess it's not terrible considering it was a fresh turkey and not frozen. But, it was not a cheap turkey by any means.
So, after two days of shopping and cooking our dinner looked like this: stuffed mushrooms, roasted red peppers, fried zucchini and eggplant with spicy marinara dipping sauce, roasted veggies, stuffing, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, turkey and gravy, creamed corn, salad, meats, cheeses, olives, apple pie, and chocolate chip cookies. Actually, after all that, I think the chocolate chip cookies were everyone's favorite. We probably could have skipped the turkey and everyone would have been happy with just the cookies.
Overall, the dinner was a huge success. Of course it's not the same being in Italy and not America for Thanksgiving, but it was a good time. We had about 17 people here for dinner, and it all went really well. It was a lot of work, but I think it was all worth it. We estimate that 3 to 8 turkeys had to die for us to have our Thanksgiving turkey this year. At least it was tasty.
So, with that, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This year you can all be
thankful for the ease of daily life in America, modern appliances, technology, and frozen turkey! Sometimes I really wonder how this country manages to survive when things in daily life are just so difficult.
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chris trussler
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Good Blog
I enjoy reading your blog. Ran across exploring. Keep up the good work and the interesting stories.