I have some great memories of Thanksgivings past, here in Bolivia. I have a few friends who know how to do it up right. Probably my best Thanksgiving was a few years ago when I lived up in Cochabamba, another city here. My friend Therese put out the best spread I’ve seen short of my mom’s house. It was impressive. What was just as impressive (if not more so) was that, after heaping my plate like I hadn’t heaped it since arriving in South America, I turned around to see my petite Canadian host sporting a plate just as full as mine. That girl matched me bite for bite. I’m still in awe...
However, these days most of my Canadian friends have left Bolivia for one reason or another, and so the option of just mooching off one of them seems to have abandoned me as well. I was vaguely tossing around the idea of cooking something and made the mistake of mentioning that to that same friend, one day on Facebook. The next day (or even maybe that same night, I don’t remember) she wrote me a three page e-mail outlining how to prepare the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. She even included the Spanish names of spices and whatnot that I’d need. I figured that if I wussed out at that point it would just be sad. So Saturday afternoon, off to the grocery store I went to try and put together what was likely to be my biggest fiasco to date.
As a side note...standing in front of a wall of spices trying to figure out which one was Canela (cinnamon) or Muscade Moulue (ground nutmeg) was pretty much at the very outside edge of what I’m willing to do in a supermarket. It took me like an hour. Not to mention the very vague “Poultry spice” on the list. What the heck is that? There are a lot of bottles with little pictures of chickens on them. They can’t all be chicken spice. And to clarify...none of them actually said chicken spice. I would have figured that one out.
I was quite sad that I couldn’t find any cranberry sauce. Seriously...what’s a turkey without cranberry sauce?! Later that night I was lamenting this to a North American friend who said that there was, in fact, cranberry sauce in the store. She’d seen it. It just wasn’t with the canned goods. It was over near the freezers. I hurried back to the store and sure enough...neatly stacked above the frozen fish section were two happy rows of canned cranberries.
Well, of course...the frozen fish department. How’d I miss that?
So if the buying of the ingredients was this traumatic, I’m sure you’re wondering how the actual cooking of the meal went. Here’s the thing...fairly well. I know...I’m as surprised as you are. There were a few glitches in the well-oiled machine that is my cooking ability...but I managed to fake my way past them in my normal Ken fashion.
My first oversight was when I decided to cook the pumpkin pies Saturday night. That wasn’t so much the problem (my friend advised me to cook them the night before), as it was that I didn’t get a chance to start until 9 o’clock at night. But I figured I’d be fine. After all...how hard can cooking a couple of pies be? What I failed to take into account was that I wasn’t cooking just a couple of pies. I couldn’t find normal pie plates, so I’d bought these pans that made like eight little individual loafs. I thought it’d be fun for everyone to have little personal pumpkin pies. You know...very Martha Stewart.
Do you know how long it takes to flippin’ put dough into sixteen little personal pie plates? Especially when I couldn’t get the dough to stay in one piece. It kept falling apart. So I had to cut one big rectangle for the bottom of the pan...another for the one side...another for the next side...another for the other side...another for the last side... SIXTEEN TIMES I did that. 2:30 in the morning I finished those dumb pies.
The other problem were the cloves. The recipe called for them, but somehow they didn’t look right once they were in the mix. I could just imagine people trying to chomp down on these little brown...branchy looking things. I was pretty sure I had the wrong stuff...
...so I tried to dig them out. They kind of floated, so it sort of worked. It took a while. Then when I ate the pie and chomped on one that I’d missed...I kind of liked it. So now I know...
And then there was the turkey. You know how turkeys are supposed to have that little plastic pop-out thingy that tells you when the turkey is cooked? I was very specific in choosing my turkey and made sure the package said that this turkey came equipped. Except it didn’t. When I opened the package, there was no little plastic thingy. I did what any guy would do. I called mom. She assured me I’d be fine and that when the turkey was cooked, the legs and wings would move fairly easily and that’s how you could tell it was ready.
So the guys and I carefully stuffed our little friend (who I named “Fred”) and tied his little legs and butt thing together, and put him in his little tinfoil tent and put him in the oven. I then came back to check on him at the appointed time...
...to find that his legs and wings had fallen off. His legs were still nicely tied together. They just weren’t attached to his body any more. I figured he was ready...
The only other thing that didn’t go exactly as planned was my broccoli/mushroom soup casserole. It was just broccoli and some onions with mushroom soup and cheese. But you can’t buy canned mushroom soup here (which the recipe called for) so I used a powdered soup mix instead. I added all the liquid and figured it would thicken up as it cooked. Except it didn’t. So it was broccoli and cheese in a sort of cloudy water sauce. The good thing was that it tasted fine and no one knew what it was supposed to be like. They just figured that’s how Canadians cook their broccoli.
I’d invited our two pastors and another family from church over, and there were some definite culture moments as we sat down to eat. But for once it wasn’t me that was having them. So that was nice. To start off, everyone was pretty sceptical about the creamed corn. They’d never seen that before. Andres very tentatively put his fork into the bowl and tried a tiny bit...and discovered that Ken wasn’t quite as out to lunch as he’d originally thought. Cream corn ended up being a big hit. One of the guys asked me how I prepared it. I just told him it was “complicated” and left it at that...
The baked potatoes were a new thing too. I demonstrated how you cut them open and mash a bit of margarine on them (I told them that it was tradition to make your tinfoil into a ball and throw it at someone. I nailed Roberto square in the side of the head. It was an impressive shot. I also told them that it was tradition that you couldn’t throw your tinfoil ball back at the person that just hit you. I like my traditions...). I also had chives and some bacon bits...but sadly no sour cream. Ivo (the husband of the family) could not get over how good it was. He kept saying, “Never have I had margarine on potatoes before!” They just don’t do that here. He ate like three of them.
The cranberry sauce was a bit difficult to explain too. No one could quite figure out why we were putting jam on our turkey. But everyone had it again with their seconds, so I think they liked it.
The final funny moment came when it was time to eat the pies. I was probably the most nervous about that. First of all, I had never made a pie of any kind before in my life. Secondly, deserts are one thing that don’t always cross that cultural divide very well. Bolivian deserts are quite a bit different than our Canadian ones. I explained that the pies were made from pumpkin and that this was a traditional desert that we ate at Thanksgiving. Everyone was again surprised, since pumpkin is usually only used in soup here. It’d be like us having a squash pie.
But...the pies were a big hit too. The funny part was when Jorge (one of our pastors) was eating his pie. He’d been in the bathroom when I explained what they were. He was happily tossing it down when Ivo commented beside him, “I never thought I’d eat pumpkin in a dessert...”
“PUMPKIN?!” says Jorge staring at his pie. “This is pumpkin?!”
But he liked it. So there you go. It’s entertaining when people have that kind of reaction to your food. Like I said earlier...it’s usually the other way around. I figured since there was no food left at the end and everyone was moaning about how full they were...we did pretty good. It was very Canadian and very Thanksgiving-ish.
Here are a few pictures of the happenings...
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One last thing that was interesting. Silvana (the wife of the family) commented on the fact that Bolivia has a day for just about everything (which is true) but not one to be thankful. Before we ate, I explained that often on Thanksgiving with my family, before we ate, we go around the table and just say a couple of things we’re thankful for. Of course in good Bolivian form, when we did it here everyone kind of preached a little sermon about what they were thankful for. It took awhile. But what was cool was how seriously people took it. When we got to the last of the guys, he could hardly talk. He was very emotional and cried through just about his whole speech. Silvana was the last to share and she cried as well. It reminded me how important it is to express to God our thankfulness. After everyone was finished, Jorge prayed. It was a great way to start our first Thanksgiving Day dinner in the house! =)
I might even try again for Christmas...
However, these days most of my Canadian friends have left Bolivia for one reason or another, and so the option of just mooching off one of them seems to have abandoned me as well. I was vaguely tossing around the idea of cooking something and made the mistake of mentioning that to that same friend, one day on Facebook. The next day (or even maybe that same night, I don’t remember) she wrote me a three page e-mail outlining how to prepare the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. She even included the Spanish names of spices and whatnot that I’d need. I figured that if I wussed out at that point it would just be sad. So Saturday afternoon, off to the grocery store I went to try and put together what was likely to be my biggest fiasco to date.
As a side note...standing in front of a wall of spices trying to figure out which one was Canela (cinnamon) or Muscade Moulue (ground nutmeg) was pretty much at the very outside edge of what I’m willing to do in a supermarket. It took me like an hour. Not to mention the very vague “Poultry spice” on the list. What the heck is that? There are a lot of bottles with little pictures of chickens on them. They can’t all be chicken spice. And to clarify...none of them actually said chicken spice. I would have figured that one out.
I was quite sad that I couldn’t find any cranberry sauce. Seriously...what’s a turkey without cranberry sauce?! Later that night I was lamenting this to a North American friend who said that there was, in fact, cranberry sauce in the store. She’d seen it. It just wasn’t with the canned goods. It was over near the freezers. I hurried back to the store and sure enough...neatly stacked above the frozen fish section were two happy rows of canned cranberries.
Well, of course...the frozen fish department. How’d I miss that?
So if the buying of the ingredients was this traumatic, I’m sure you’re wondering how the actual cooking of the meal went. Here’s the thing...fairly well. I know...I’m as surprised as you are. There were a few glitches in the well-oiled machine that is my cooking ability...but I managed to fake my way past them in my normal Ken fashion.
My first oversight was when I decided to cook the pumpkin pies Saturday night. That wasn’t so much the problem (my friend advised me to cook them the night before), as it was that I didn’t get a chance to start until 9 o’clock at night. But I figured I’d be fine. After all...how hard can cooking a couple of pies be? What I failed to take into account was that I wasn’t cooking just a couple of pies. I couldn’t find normal pie plates, so I’d bought these pans that made like eight little individual loafs. I thought it’d be fun for everyone to have little personal pumpkin pies. You know...very Martha Stewart.
Do you know how long it takes to flippin’ put dough into sixteen little personal pie plates? Especially when I couldn’t get the dough to stay in one piece. It kept falling apart. So I had to cut one big rectangle for the bottom of the pan...another for the one side...another for the next side...another for the other side...another for the last side... SIXTEEN TIMES I did that. 2:30 in the morning I finished those dumb pies.
The other problem were the cloves. The recipe called for them, but somehow they didn’t look right once they were in the mix. I could just imagine people trying to chomp down on these little brown...branchy looking things. I was pretty sure I had the wrong stuff...
...so I tried to dig them out. They kind of floated, so it sort of worked. It took a while. Then when I ate the pie and chomped on one that I’d missed...I kind of liked it. So now I know...
And then there was the turkey. You know how turkeys are supposed to have that little plastic pop-out thingy that tells you when the turkey is cooked? I was very specific in choosing my turkey and made sure the package said that this turkey came equipped. Except it didn’t. When I opened the package, there was no little plastic thingy. I did what any guy would do. I called mom. She assured me I’d be fine and that when the turkey was cooked, the legs and wings would move fairly easily and that’s how you could tell it was ready.
So the guys and I carefully stuffed our little friend (who I named “Fred”) and tied his little legs and butt thing together, and put him in his little tinfoil tent and put him in the oven. I then came back to check on him at the appointed time...
...to find that his legs and wings had fallen off. His legs were still nicely tied together. They just weren’t attached to his body any more. I figured he was ready...
The only other thing that didn’t go exactly as planned was my broccoli/mushroom soup casserole. It was just broccoli and some onions with mushroom soup and cheese. But you can’t buy canned mushroom soup here (which the recipe called for) so I used a powdered soup mix instead. I added all the liquid and figured it would thicken up as it cooked. Except it didn’t. So it was broccoli and cheese in a sort of cloudy water sauce. The good thing was that it tasted fine and no one knew what it was supposed to be like. They just figured that’s how Canadians cook their broccoli.
I’d invited our two pastors and another family from church over, and there were some definite culture moments as we sat down to eat. But for once it wasn’t me that was having them. So that was nice. To start off, everyone was pretty sceptical about the creamed corn. They’d never seen that before. Andres very tentatively put his fork into the bowl and tried a tiny bit...and discovered that Ken wasn’t quite as out to lunch as he’d originally thought. Cream corn ended up being a big hit. One of the guys asked me how I prepared it. I just told him it was “complicated” and left it at that...
The baked potatoes were a new thing too. I demonstrated how you cut them open and mash a bit of margarine on them (I told them that it was tradition to make your tinfoil into a ball and throw it at someone. I nailed Roberto square in the side of the head. It was an impressive shot. I also told them that it was tradition that you couldn’t throw your tinfoil ball back at the person that just hit you. I like my traditions...). I also had chives and some bacon bits...but sadly no sour cream. Ivo (the husband of the family) could not get over how good it was. He kept saying, “Never have I had margarine on potatoes before!” They just don’t do that here. He ate like three of them.
The cranberry sauce was a bit difficult to explain too. No one could quite figure out why we were putting jam on our turkey. But everyone had it again with their seconds, so I think they liked it.
The final funny moment came when it was time to eat the pies. I was probably the most nervous about that. First of all, I had never made a pie of any kind before in my life. Secondly, deserts are one thing that don’t always cross that cultural divide very well. Bolivian deserts are quite a bit different than our Canadian ones. I explained that the pies were made from pumpkin and that this was a traditional desert that we ate at Thanksgiving. Everyone was again surprised, since pumpkin is usually only used in soup here. It’d be like us having a squash pie.
But...the pies were a big hit too. The funny part was when Jorge (one of our pastors) was eating his pie. He’d been in the bathroom when I explained what they were. He was happily tossing it down when Ivo commented beside him, “I never thought I’d eat pumpkin in a dessert...”
“PUMPKIN?!” says Jorge staring at his pie. “This is pumpkin?!”
But he liked it. So there you go. It’s entertaining when people have that kind of reaction to your food. Like I said earlier...it’s usually the other way around. I figured since there was no food left at the end and everyone was moaning about how full they were...we did pretty good. It was very Canadian and very Thanksgiving-ish.
Here are a few pictures of the happenings...
Sandro stuffing the turkey...
The guys helping chop vegtables. If you think they
helped cook the rest of the meal? Think again.
Bolivia was playing Brazil on TV...
The turkey in the oven. I didn't take this picture,
but obviously someone figured we needed
a picture of the turkey cooking...
Ruddy generously offered to hold a
plate of turkey so he could be in the picture...
The spread! One thing missing you'll notice...no bowl of rice.
I almost broke down and cooked a pot, but then
figured we could go one day without eating rice.
Jorge actually commented afterwards
that he "didn't even miss the rice!"
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Ivo and Silvana's little guy Emiliano. He was very cute.
He kept going around saying,
"This is very good. This is very good."
I'm thinking maybe he was coached before he got here...
This is our Thanksgivng Day group. Mostly anyhow...
three of the guys got home late and
didn't make it into the picture. But it's most of us...
One last thing that was interesting. Silvana (the wife of the family) commented on the fact that Bolivia has a day for just about everything (which is true) but not one to be thankful. Before we ate, I explained that often on Thanksgiving with my family, before we ate, we go around the table and just say a couple of things we’re thankful for. Of course in good Bolivian form, when we did it here everyone kind of preached a little sermon about what they were thankful for. It took awhile. But what was cool was how seriously people took it. When we got to the last of the guys, he could hardly talk. He was very emotional and cried through just about his whole speech. Silvana was the last to share and she cried as well. It reminded me how important it is to express to God our thankfulness. After everyone was finished, Jorge prayed. It was a great way to start our first Thanksgiving Day dinner in the house! =)
I might even try again for Christmas...
8 comments:
Very impressive Ken!!
Brilliant!!! Oh, how I miss pumpkin pie. I'm planning on eating a slice everyday when I'm home for Christmas. Good work cooking, too. I'm honestly impressed.
Thanks guys! I appreciate it. It helps when people's expectations are low... =)
Oh funny...my family decided we didn't want turkey this year. (Kerri might have been distraught since her and the girls were here visiting, but she never said anything.) We had a pickerel fry and potatoes with Grandma Seymour's banana cream pie. Was great. Shows it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you are grateful for the family and friends you eat it with. Kudos Ken!!!
Well done, Ken, both in the cooking and in the writing. I laughed out loud most of the way through it ... until the end, which was very touching. Bless you.
Christie, I miss fish fries...maybe next year when I'm home! That sounded good! Colleen, I'm glad my cooking abilities made you laugh. =) I'm used to it...
Thanks for the comments guys!
Sounds great!! Impressive for sure! Being thankful is good! Miss you...
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