turkey time

To keep y'all on your toes, Mads and I are going to be posting about several significant events over the next couple days, but not in any special order. Our days and weekends have been so busy recently (after all, we DO come home in 13 days, remember?) that everything is kind of blurring together. My first assignment? THANKSGIVING.

About a month ago, we started to plot what we wanted to do on this oh-so-cherished holiday. The most obvious thing we could do would be to replicate the yummy family-style meal we have every year in the States, right? But Chile kind of complicated our plans. 

First of all, no one here understands you can cook a whole turkey. Like, whole turkeys exist in grocery stores, but our host families have no idea why. I had to repeat, "Yes, you can cook a turkey ... yes, you eat a cooked turkey ... yes, those frozen birds are food ..." for 5 minutes straight at dinner one night, and I was just met with blank stares and, "No entiendo ..." My host mom also voiced that she didn't understand what turkey had to do with the Virgin Mary. She seemed tiffed that this "holiday" of ours was so senseless. After a brief pilgrim and Indian lesson, dispelling visions of turkeys being sacrificed to the Mother of God, we finally came to a common understanding. So Rosi conceded that she'd allow the turkey experimentation in her home, and we bought a turkey. Geez. Obstacle number one overcome.


We then set about harvesting (yes, I'm trying to use Thanksgiving-y vocabulary) recipes from Momma Hannifan and TasteSpotting (WARNING: Don't click here unless you want to be eternally condemned to distraction and discontentment with your mediocre cooking skills). And so, our Thanksgiving spread was to look as such:


- Yummy turkey
- Broccoli-cheese-rice-watered-chestnut casserole
- Cranberry apple cobbler
- Sweet potato crumble casserole
- Pumpkin pie


Looks pretty tasty and well-rounded right? 

After streaming the Macy's Day Parade online ...

That's some Thanksgiving joy on her face if I've ever seen it ...

 ... we went to the grocery store and returned home for our 7-hour baking marathon.
 

Before I describe what we ended up cooking, here's your 2010 Thanksgiving Bake-Off Team.


MARY
Known for her great olfactory sense.

ERICA
Great at sampling things. And being cute.

Anddd of course, yours truly, Mads and Abby.

OK, so here's what we cooked:

- Yummy turkey
We had NO CLUE how to cook a turkey. After thawing it all morning in its package, we finally read the instructions and it said, "NEVER, under any circumstances, thaw the turkey in its package." Woops. The only "suggestion" in the "suggested recipe" was to inject pisco (Chilean vodka) into the turkey. Of course. We did cognac instead because the only pisco in the Gonzalez fridge was mango-flavored. But problem: no needle for the massive syringe my mom whipped out of the utensil drawer. So she told me to run to the pharmacy and ask for a 4-inch needle. Good thing I covered those track lines on my arms (kidding...), otherwise the pharmacist would've given me a weirder look than she already gave me. I thought I was going to have to explain again that no, the Virgin Mary had nothing to do with my desire to inject cognac into a turkey, but she finally just shrugged her shoulders and coughed up the needle.


We also added some lemon and let it baste (is that the correct cooking term? So much taste-spotting terminology in my head and no sense to it ...) on a bed of apple slices.


It ended up being seriously the tastiest turkey I've ever eaten. Everyone at the dinner (Madeline + Erica + Mary + host parents + my host sister) agreed. My host dad gave us a 7.0 (highest mark you can get in the Chilean academic grading system ... sadly the only authority figure who thinks so highly of our work down here).

Scandalous.

LOOK AT THAT.

- Broccoli-cheese-rice-watered-chestnut casserole
OK, here's the deal here: Chile doesn't have the Velveeta cheese, nor the cream of chicken soup, that this heavenly casserole requires. So we improvised by buying what looked to be nacho cheese paste in a plastic tub and mushroom soup powder mix. And how does one describe a watered chestnut? Needless to say, they were nowhere to be found. But this too, miraculously, turned out quite well.

Notch-yo cheese?

- Cranberry apple cobbler
Chileans think cranberries exist here. When you type "cranberry" into WordReference.com, it spits out the word "arándano." That's also the word for "blueberry," at least in Chile (but I'm starting to doubt Chilean's fruit proficiency ... the guy at the fro yo place told me the other day that what we consider to be blackberries are actually the love babies of blueberries and raspberries. SO WRONG.) "OK," we thought, "We'll just use blueberries instead. NBD." Then we couldn't find brown sugar for the crumble on top. We asked lots of store clerks for it, and they all presented us "azúcar moreno," but it was turbinado (yeah, I used to work at Smoothie King). I'll give Chileans a break on this confusion ... it was, in fact, the color brown. It just wasn't brown sugar. So we found some maple and brown sugar oatmeal and used that instead. Aren't you getting proud of our creativity?

That's Madeline's decapitated body mixin' some cinnamon and sugar and apples and blueberries.

- Sweet potato crumble casserole
Sweet potatoes do exist in this country, but only through some vendors at this one special market. So Rosi picked some up for me one day. They're not as orange as the ones in the States, but still, quite delicious.

This was luckily as close to disaster as we got. Just a little burnt on top. Still delissshhhh.

- Pumpkin pie 
This was a huge concern. We were so worried that this would be the one and only year out of our 21 (20 for some) years of life that we hadn't eaten pie on Thanksgiving (I've heard stories, myth or truth no sé, of Poppa Hannifan rubbing pie on my gums at age 1 month). But have not fear ... the Buterbaughs (alllllll six of them) are here! Well, they were here, for a six days to be exact, and they smuggled us in some pumpkin pie in a can (jk, Mrs. Buterbaugh called Delta and they gave her the green light to bring it on down). Hallelujah. The only problem was we couldn't find pie crust, so we had to use this puff pastry stuff that burnt easily ... but hey. We study abroad kids are all about adaptability and adjustments now, right Mads?

There's that beacon of Great American Food (excuse me, Great United States Food ... we're all Americans, now).

Nom.

 And when all was done, we sat down to a table sprinkled with plastic pumpkins (compliments of Momma Hannifan), and went around the table and gave thanks. It was quite the magical moment. Heartfelt words were said.

See that Christmas tree peeking around the corner? It was listening to Mads say she's grateful for Chile.

We let the man of the house cut the turkey.

We really do look like a scene out of Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving utopia, don't we?

And what made this day even more spectacular? Christmas music (gracias, 98.1 KUDL Christmas radio online) AND Christmas decorations AND Love Actually.

Maybe some "Santa Baby"?

Gosh, Chile. Have I told you lately that I love you?