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Published: December 1st 2008
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preparing stuff for thanksgiving Well… it has been quite the week! Thanksgiving turned out fabulous! We ended up having more guests than we originally planned, we had 9 in total. It was Cecilia, Rachel and myself, along with David, Ana, Lourdes and Sole from our school, and Mari Carmen from Cecilia’s school and her boyfriend’s friend Vicente. We started the day by buying 7 kilos of turkey. We went to the butcher shop across the street from our house and the man there was very nice. He cut the turkey for us and cleaned it. We took it home and seasoned it and put it into the refrigerator. After school we came home and started preparations for dinner.
Around 8:30 or so, guests started to arrive. We had wine and a few small snacks before dinner. Since our oven is quite small and it doesn’t have temperature dials on it, we had to guess on everything. And since the traditional foods we eat for thanksgiving are obviously American dishes, we had to prepare everything from scratch. We made the turkey of course, which turned out so delicious! We also had parmesan corn, broccoli, green bean casserole (Ceci and I even made the onion rings for
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making dessert on top!), stuffing, gravy, candied yams, made from scratch cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and vegetables that we cooked with the turkey. Since we were guessing on everything and making it all from scratch with some random ingredients, we were worried that everything wouldn’t turn out, but everything came out so delicious and perfect! The food was such a hit, they liked all of it! I was really impressed with us because I have never cooked a turkey before or made things like stuffing from scratch, and plus most of the things that we use for cooking are hard to find, but everything came out so well! Thursday was also David’s birthday, so Ana brought a lemon mousse and champagne. Mom had sent me a Steak n Shake hat in the mail and we couldn’t find birthday hats here, so we made David wear that hat! We also made pumpkin and apple turnovers for dessert, they were delicious! Of course we served them a la mode. People stayed till late and we ended up washing dishes till about 2am! During dinner we went around the table and everyone said what they were thankful for. It was such a pleasant meal and
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doing the turnovers it was a thanksgiving I will never forget!
Saturday we went to Rute, which is a small town near Priego that is famous because it has a lot of museums. It is very popular and busy during the holiday seasons with lots of people visiting all of the museums. Rachel, Cecilia, myself, David, Ana and Lourdes all went. On the way, we stopped to see the largest acorn tree in all of Andalusia, it wasn’t all that impressive haha, and we got lost like 3 times trying to find it. It was in the middle of nowhere but at least I can say that I saw it!
When we arrived in Rute there were so many visitors! We could hardly find a place to park. We first visited the Sugar museum. They had castles and all sorts of neat things, all made completely out of sugar. It also had some history and interesting facts. Next, we visited the Museum of Anis liquor. Everything was decorated for Christmas, so I absolutely loved it! They showed how to make it and we got to sample all the different types of liquor. Some of them were pretty awful! But I really liked
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rachel carving the turkey a blackberry one that was actually non-alcoholic. It was a cool museum. After that we went to the Ham museum. Anyone who has been to Spain knows how much they LOVE and appreciate ham. There were legs of ham everywhere. It wasn’t that interesting but we did get to sample some good chorizo. We also were given morcilla, which is the blood sausage. There were a few shops also and we got to sample lots of treats like roasted nuts and things made out of almonds, which are popular during Christmas. We also got to try different kinds of sausages. After that we left Rute and went outside the city to have lunch and a barbeque place, but its not what you think of when you think of American BBQ. It just means that they cook meat over a flame. We got salads and potatoes and just ordered the mixed plate- it came with different kinds of bbq’ed meats. I’m not even sure what some of them were. I think we had some rabbit, lamb, chicken, pork, who knows what else. It was pretty good though. After the meal the waiter brought different kinds of liquor and shot glasses to
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the cooks! have one “for digestion” as they commonly do here in Spain.
We left the restaurant and headed for the last museum- The Chocolate museum! It was just a factory and you could see where they package and decorate everything. They had chocolate life-sized figures of the Princess of Spain, a famous Flamenco singer and the larges chocolate nativity scene in the world. It was made out of 1,450 kilograms of chocolate and was about 52 square meters! Pretty impressive. After that it was pretty late already and so we headed home.
After a nap and sitting around the brasero- which is a table that has a heater built into the bottom of it (most houses don’t have central heating!) we had dinner and got ready to go out to celebrate David’s birthday. We went out with David and Ana and went to a few bars. It was a very fun night!
Sunday we woke up late and went to Ana’s to have lunch. Lourdes and David also came over. We sat around and talked about the previous night and had some snacks and then it was time for lunch. Ana prepared cooked mushrooms with eggs and bacon in it, spiced
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all of our yummy food made from scratch! beets, olives & chips, caramelized onions and goat cheese, and bread of course. For the main course we had ink pasta, which is pasta that has been soaked in squid ink, with little eels and shrimp. She cooked it in olive oil with garlic and cayenne pepper. I was obviously hesitant to try it, but it was really good! For dessert she made “arroz con leche” aka rice pudding. I’ve never had it before and it was pretty good, I was just so full from everything else! We then sat around her space heater and cuddled under the blankets and played Scatagories. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a game where you have 12 categories- like food, countries, language, tools, color, etc.- and you pick a letter and you have 2 minutes to come up with a word in that category that starts with that letter. It was really fun because we alternated doing it in English and Spanish. After that we had tea and just looked at pictures and stuff. We didn’t want to leave because it was so warm in her apartment. It was really fun and everything was delicious. We went home at about
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our group for thanksgiving dinner 8pm and sat around the brasero again and then watched our Sunday night Spanish reality show. It was a fabulous weekend!
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Megan
non-member comment
how fun
I'm glad your turkey day turned out so well. I love you and can't wait to see you at christmas