A Gaucho Thanksgiving

Ah, Thanksgiving! That time of year when the cold begins to set in, the leaves dry up and crumble, dancing as the winter wind whips down from Canada. To feel the comforting sensation of a warm oven, to arrive home to the sweet smell of pies baking, the turkey in the oven, and friends and family gathered around the hearth, Ah, such fond memories... But none of that this year!

For expats like myself, we are all too familiar with those particularly pernicious challenges of living far from home, far from the culture and tradition that makes this day so much easier. And for those of you who think celebrating Thanksgiving in the U.S. is hard, you really need to go that extra mile to have a true Thanksgiving feast far from home. 

Let us first list the ways in which celebrating Thanksgiving is easier while abroad. 

1. No family! Yes, no family means you decide who attends, and who DOESN'T attend. No hyper children or crazy aunts. No table divided on religion or blue or red party lines. Yes, living abroad takes politics and religion almost entirely out of the equation. But this is perhaps the only way in which Thanksgiving abroad is easier. 

2. Well, also that friends typically don't need to travel very far--perhaps 30 minutes by bus at most.

The stuffing before the burn.

Here are a few challenges faced, fought, and overcome in my efforts to host a Thanksgiving dinner whilst living abroad. 

1. One must improvise. Yes. Forget turkey in Argentina--and a host of other countries for that matter. Most of what you cook traditionally cannot be replicated exactly in other countries, unless you are wealthy enough, and can take the time off of work (another complication) to spend the day traveling around the city in search of all the ingredients you will need (You still probably wouldn't find marshmallow fluff or cranberries). 

For food I swapped organic chicken with homemade barbecue sauce for the turkey, which may or may not be located in a large supermarket far away from home, the price and quality of which is as mysterious and unknown as the presence... or lack of presence... of the bird. 

I made apple crisp to replace pumpkin pie and pecan pie.  

Mashed potatoes: The secret is in extra
crema de leche, garlic and cheese.

We had some damn good mashed potatoes and macncheese, but I needed to sacrifice the cranberry sauce and marshmallow salad. 

Fortunately the Canadian brought deviled eggs and the Argies brought cider, which brought us a couple steps closer to that traditional thanksgiving table we so desperately sought to replicate. 

Stuffing was a success, but the top burned because the ovens don't have temperature settings, and a thermometer isn't one of those luxuries you go out and spend money on : )

2. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday. You can't take a day off of work and neither can anybody else. So you opt to have Thanksgiving dinner on Black Friday, at night, after a long day of work. This not only means you have to cook much of the food the day before, but you also need to eat, and eat, and eat, at 10PM at night, then sit around for five hours until the food is hopefully sufficiently digested so that you can climb into bed and not suffer too much regurgitation. I suppose you wouldn't have to eat so much, but that kind of takes the fun out of Thanksgiving. Celebrate 100% or not at all.

Setting the table.

3. Summer. Thanksgiving is not a good holiday to celebrate in the summer, and right now it's summer in Argentina. Imagine doing oven-broiled barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, mac and cheese, and apple crisp on a hot, humid summer night. Well, you put a hand to your heart and tell yourself it's for the holiday and you suffer through it. But...

4. Add water cuts to the mix and you're in for some pretty scrappy cooking conditions. I went to clean those potatoes and apples and realized there was no water. None. I couldn't even go to the bathroom...for a day. But I guess this is part of the sacrifice as well. 

Nick, Cristian, Cece, and Anne. Let's eat already!!!

5. One or two general mishaps. There are always one or two mishaps with every Thanksgiving whether at home or abroad. My mishap was that in preparing the salad I dropped the olive oil, the glass bottle shattering on the floor and the oil slicking across the kitchen. I mopped it, and mopped it, and mopped it, but oil can be a nasty, slippery business to clean up--and I left a little to fight another day. There was also the cider bottle incident, which chinked a piece of the glass table. Sigh...

Listing all of these difficulties in hosting a Thanksgiving makes it seem like a nightmare, though in reality it is far from such. For as with all difficult circumstances, with greater difficulty comes greater reward, so long as you succeed in reaching that reward. After all the sweat, the cleaning, the preparing and the improvising, we came out with one damn good Thanksgiving. 

Pollo barbacoa, estilito gringuito!

So for all the folks living abroad, don't fear the preparation of the Thanksgiving meal, or hosting other holidays for that matter. Stay strong to your traditions. Fight the good fight and reap the rewards. 

And for all you folks who gripe about the Thanksgiving madness at home, once the battlefield has cleared and the table has been set, you can hopefully settle down to a good meal and good company, so long as the crazy aunts and hyper children stay home. 

Next I will be travelling to Colombia for Christmas and new years with Claudia's family, so stay posted for an entry or two about that. 

Cheers from abroad,

Kyle

Me, Cristian, Cece, Ann, and Claudia.