Night Before the Bird

Hey everyone, Mitchell here.

This year we're celebrating our Thanksgiving 2010 here in China on Friday because the kids' schedules work out better. We're having our friends from California come over to help us celebrate and we've been looking forward to our little slice of Americana here in the Eastern Hemisphere for quite a while. We've been preparing for a few days now but unfortunately things haven't gone as smoothly as we'd have liked.

Turkey. Check. Wait, it's still frozen? Hmmm, the turkey is still frozen and it's been 'thawing' in the refrigerator for 3 days now. If it doesn't magically finish thawing tonight we'll need to do so fancy cold-water thawing tomorrow morning. Speaking of turkey, we got ours at the market near the embassy district. It's a frozen 14.5 lb Chinese turkey (or huǒ jī as it's referred to around here. That literally means 'fire chicken'). My chicken people at the market didn't carry any so we had to drive down to Sanlitun to pick one up. And the only reason I know it's 14.5 pounds is because I stood with it on the scale in our bathroom. :) Our tiny oven won't accommodate a roasting pan so we're kicking it old school with a rack and some tin foil. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I finished the pecan pie tonight. It would've been finished earlier but Jess and I had to shell the fricking pecans by hand! Now we know why they're so expensive, they're impossible to shell without completely destroying them. In the end it didn't really matter since my Chinese convection oven burned the pie. Oh well, I'll cover up the burnt taste with Cool Whip when we eat it. Oh wait, they don't have that there either. Sigh. I may be the only one eating my burnt, pecan dust pie with no whipped cream tomorrow although Henry will probably help too.

We're making Mom's cheesy potatoes. No frozen hash browns so we're going to manually grate the potatoes. I have no idea how well that will work. I'm more concerned with the lack of Cream of Celery and Cream of Potato soups. We're going to supplement with Cream of Mushroom (must be internationally loved since they sell it here) and just ignore the mushrooms.

Jess made pumpkin and banana bread. That turned out well. Apparently she's more vigilant with the Chinese convection oven than I am.

She also made a kick-butt cheese ball that we can snack on all day while we're cooking the rest of our meal. We typically eat it with Wheat Thins, but, you guessed it, you can't get those here. Typically in this situation I'd settle for Triscuits, but I think you know where this is going ... In the end, Jess bought 4 brands of foreign crackers; hopefully one will be a hit.

The biggest Thanksgiving issue we seem to be encountering is the complete lack of football on TV. Unfortunately, I won't get to see the Lions lose. I'll catch it late on Sportscenter. Oops, no I won't. They don't have that here either. I need to befriend someone who works at the U.S. Embassy; I bet they have dish.

I know for a fact our cranberries are going to rock. We had Ocean Spray put them in a can especially for us.

We'll be sure to take pictures and get them uploaded. No really, I promise we will.

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. We miss you all.