Allie's Adventures: I've got a lot to be thankful for...

Our beautiful Thanksgiving table

It's the time of year when I begin to look at my life and reflect. Not only on the past year, but my life in general. I think about my friends and family, I think about my job, I think about my past and my future. And I think about food. Yes, food. Who doesn't think about food when it comes to the holiday season? You're lying to yourself if you claim you don't.

I have to admit that Thanksgiving dinner (or lunch, or whole-day meal, whatever you want to call it- and don't forget about the left overs) is my favorite meal of the entire year. And it is interesting because I never really knew why, until 2 weeks ago. Yes, it's great to be surrounded by family and friends, but this post isn't about the mushy part of Thanksgiving, it's about the FOOD. I learned that Thanksgiving food is the best because: 1. You really eat it any other time of the year, but you could, 2. There is just so much to choose from, and 3. Carbs. And cheese. And more carbs. I realized that Thanksgiving food is unique because you really eat a TON of carbs and cheese (which I love, by the way). If I have anything to say about it, if there is something that could remotely be considered healthy served at Thanksgiving, you've done it wrong. Broccoli? Throw some cheese on that shiz! Green beans? Sugar, salt and bacon please! Turkey? What's turkey without gravy?

A Thanksgiving toast- no judging on the brand!

But when you live in a country that you struggle to find things that you need for all your yummy homemade recipes, cooking for Thanksgiving can become-- interesting. I remember Skyping with my family once and they asked me what my friends and I would do. I told them we were planning on a pot-luck style dinner. When they asked about the turkey, I told them it is REALLY difficult, and expensive, to find turkey in this country, so we were planning on getting chicken. Do you plan on roasting it yourself? Seeing as we have VERY limited oven space, we will probably just walk down the the corner and get one out of the trucks. Apparently this isn't a normal response in America (it seemed totally normal, and logical to me at the time). I then had to explain that there are several trucks/cars that park on the street, open the back, and it is a full blown rotisserie! And the chickens look and smell delicious! Even though I was totally serious at the time, we ended up not getting a out-of-the-back-of-a-truck chicken, just a normal chicken from the store. Already roasted.

Chicken

Thanksgiving took a little more planning than I thought. I knew exactly what I was going to make. Broccoli and cheese casserole. My absolute favorite casserole. But when you can't find cream of celery soup, nor Velveeta cheese, it becomes a little difficult. OK, I'll do a different casserole. Cream of mushroom is at Costco. FOR $20 for a few cans. No dice. OK, then I'll have to do something else. I'd been put in charge of vegetables, so Adrienne and I decided to take a stroll to our local market and bought random veggies- zucchini, broccoli, corn, peppers. So I asked my parents and asked what I could throw together with what I had. It seemed like I was missing at least one ingredient for all the recipes they were suggesting. So I got online, chose 2 random recipes and decided to try to combine them.

When recipes go wrong

Goal: Yummy stuffed Zucchini. I had 4 halves of zucchini, peppers, garlic, sausage (technically beer and cheese bratwurst but you deal with what you have), cream cheese, onion, Ritz and Parmesan. So I just randomly threw stuff together. All 4 were different. 2 had cream cheese, the other 2 had Ritz and Parmesan on top. Some had bell peppers, some had garlic salt, some had Italian herb seasoning. I had no clue how they would taste, but it was a shot. So I baked them up, and headed over to Kaleena's to cook the rest of the veggies closer to cooking time (there was also an incident where Adrienne decided to launch one of my zucchinis across the street, therefore we had one zucchini with a little less filling).

The food ended up being amazing. And we had waaayyyy too much! We had the zucchinis, broccoli, corn, green beans, carrots, stuffing, mac n cheese, sweet potatoes (with rainbow marshmallows haha), fresh baked rolls and breads, pumpkin cream cheese dip, SWEET mashed potatoes with no gravy (apparently English people don't know the importance of this key dish in an American Thanksgiving, we still love you though Lauren, maybe) and chicken. For desert we had pumpkin pie, apple pie, apple crisp, brownies and ice cream. OMG it was amazing. So delicious.

My plate

I spy food comas!

We had games too. Jenga, Pictionary and a whip cream fight (that was only between Kaleena and Kieran). You know you've eaten a ton when the punishment for losing Jenga is "BROWNIE! BROWNIE! BROWNIE!" Also, when multiple people are down for the count in food comas!