Thanksgiving

This post was intended for publication several weeks ago! Please excuse the delay.

Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires was a success! Last Sunday me and my host family had about 14 guests over, including neighbors, friends, and lovers, to celebrate Thanksgiving Argentine-style. Getting everything together was a huge task, but luckily I had a lot of help with the logistical challenges. The biggest task was transporting a 12 kilogram frozen turkey across the city (not to mention actually finding a place that sold full sized turkeys) and finding a place to cook it. The oven in my house was not only too small to fit the enormous bird, but is designed to cook pizzas and empanadas at high, difficult to regulate temperatures. My host family recommended I ask panaderias in our neighborhood if they could cook our turkey and, after several apparent dead ends and frantic e-mails to my spanish professor/neighbor asking to use his oven, a long-established panaderia agreed to cook and season the turkey, and even to save the juices on the side so that we could use them for gravy.

The dinner was definitely a group effort. I was in charge of the turkey and the mashed potatoes, while other guests brought drinks, cornbread, vegetable side dishes and dessert. My host dad helped to carve and serve the turkey, as well as advise me during the mashed potatoe making process. Our guests that showed up early helped transport extra chairs and tables to the terrace from our neighbor's house. We were missing the cranberries (I searched everywhere!) and pies, but the food we did have turned our great and everyone ate until it hurt, so I felt that the American tradition translated quite well.