We did begin to prepare for our feast a few days before we celebrated. My Grandma Kimler's egg noodles require proper time to dry out before they can be served! Danny and I enjoy spending one evening making them together! I do most of the mixing, kneading, and rolling, while he loves the cutting! This year we doubled the batch because we were feeding 20 people - we definitely had enough and plenty for leftovers. My favorite part of making the noodles is reading the recipe card in grandma's handwriting. It is a treasure to me and I think even if I really didn't like the noodles, I'd still make them every year just to see her handwriting and know that she followed the exact same steps in her preparation for our family feasts when I was younger! I giggle every time I make them though because she left off half of the recipe - oh grandma!!
Danny and I also prepared cream cheese pumpkin muffins (courtesy of my friend Jen's facebook picture!) for the kids' classes. We opted to make the small muffins, as we would have been in the kitchen all night had we done the big ones! We ended up with over 70 - enough to share with the classes! They were delicious - I think it is the dry pudding mix that you add to the cake mix!!
On Thanksgiving Day I went to Coop's class and read a Thanksgiving story and made pilgrim hats (made out of cookies, peanut butter cups and a bit of icing!) with them. They are precious and I was so thankful to watch Coop in his element! He is more of a leader than I thought and has made some really good friends this year!
The rest of my Thanksgiving Day was like any other day here in Tianjin! I did miss my family terribly and I wished we could be home eating turkey and watching that silly Macy's day parade! Danny was missing football and time off of work. The kids, fortunately missed nothing because they have forgotten our Thanksgiving traditions in the US! They knew mommy and daddy were cooking turkey on Saturday and that was good enough for them!! I'm so thankful for their resilience!
On Saturday we began to prepare for our feast early in the afternoon! We invited dear friends to help us celebrate, because that is what Thanksgiving is about, celebrating the harvest of the season in the company of loved ones. We had quite a feast with everyone bringing dishes to share - no one went away hungry! We spent most of the evening listening to the children play peacefully throughout the house while the adults enjoyed wine and lots of laughter. I could barely get through my toast because as I looked around the table at the faces of the people who have shared this experience with us, I was overcome with emotion. I could not tell them enough how thankful and blessed our family feels that they are a part of our lives. As much as I miss our family and friends, I wake up everyday knowing that we have family here - they may not be blood relatives, but we all do whatever it takes on a daily basis to make sure we are putting one foot in front of the other!
Each year there seems to be the question of, "Will she actually fit in our little oven?"
Thanks to Danny's turkey expertise, she came out beautiful and the right side up (last year I cooked the turkey upside down!!)!
Thanks to Oriental Trader, the kids table had plenty of activities to keep them busy!!
Thanks Guitar Hero, my little Eens now loves Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer!!!
So, Thanksgiving for us was China perfect (with a little added excitement from an asthma attack and a black out due to our main fuse blowing!!)!! We stuffed ourselves and made many memories with friends who will now most likely celebrate Thanksgiving wherever they end up!! Karen summed it up best in a painting she gave to us, it was a day of Food, Love, and Friends!!
No comments:
Post a Comment