Okay, I realize it's almost December 25. I realize that the Salvation Army bell-ringers are officially out en masse, my emailbox is not anomalously combusting with red and green commercial coupons, and Christmas carols are an inescapable fact of the nearly-daily grocery run. But before we actually reach Christmas Day and it officially becomes illegal (according to some sense of chronological decency) to reference any previous holiday, I wanted to record my latest experience of British Thanksgiving.
The very phrase itself is rather oxymoronic. As we all know, there is almost nothing more American than Thanksgiving. Stories of Plymouth Rock, Priscilla Mullins, Miles Standish, and Squanto are the foundation of almost any American primary school curriculum; who doesn't have fond memories of tracing a turkey-reminiscent shape out of his or her juvenile hand with orange crayon?
But the moment an American becomes an expatriate, some sort of genetic or psychological mutation occurs wherein anything remotely smacking of American-ness evokes a hallowed sense of nostalgia. Topping this list is anything having to do with Thanksgiving. So even though the holiday celebrates people LEAVING the country, the very fact of being in England invariably incites Americans to milk their Thanksgiving traditions for all they're worth.
The problem is, I have discovered, this is easier said than done. Case in point: pumpkin pie. The ubiquitous vegetable from which this irreplaceable dessert is made only exists in England in the week or two surrounding Halloween; a New World crop, the pumpkin has otherwise yet to establish a presence beyond the liquid puree form the British call "soup". The problem is, of course, that pumpkin thereafter becomes extinct after October 31--about four weeks before Thanksgiving. Fresh pumpkin joins its canned counterpart in extinction, the latter barely having any existence at all, being unnecessary for jack-o-lanterns. In fact, to my knowledge there is only one place in all of England to buy the pumpkin needed for a fresh Thanksgiving Pie: London, home of the three-flour, 500-employee, 80,000 square-foot Whole Foods flagship store (and four others). Ahh...all the memories from two years ago of my friends and me making the return pilgrimage from High Street Kensington laden with canned pumpkin, pumpkin bread, and even small prepared pumpkin pies!
But this is Oxford. There is no Whole Foods. And London is one too many inconvenient bus or train trips away. So as my friends and I planned to introduce our fellow course-mates to a "traditional American Thanksgiving," we realized that we would have to make some concessions. After a heated email chain wherein we debated what was absolutely essential to the celebration, we decided that another form of pie, even something other than pumpkin or apple, may be the best we could do.
Or so we thought. There I was, sitting at a table at the weekly Just Postgrads meeting (organized by St. Aldates Church) explaining my resignation to a non-pumpkin pie, when a new American acquaintance piped up nonchalantly, "Oh, you're looking for pumpkin? I have pumpkin in my freezer." My jaw just about hit the floor, but a few minutes later I was possessed of Alison's phone number and a promise for two cups' worth of fresh-frozen pumpkin!
You see, I discovered amidst the above discussions with my fellow Early Modern English coursemates that I am among the most traditional of Thanksgiving celebrants; as exemplified in "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving," Thanksgiving is just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. One of my friends stated that Thanksgiving was about the spirit of the holiday, rather than specific traditions and meal components; we would be equally happy, prosperous, and thankful with curry and chips, she said. True, but then it wouldn't be a "traditional American Thanksgiving," the concept to which we were trying to introduce our non-American friends. Oh, and I was the only one both willing and able to invest the energy in making the associated turkey and stuffing.
So it was up to me to maintain the alimentary traditions associated with the holiday. After having obtained the pumpkin, I felt reasonably confident about the dessert. Two years ago, I made pumpkin pie in a UCL Ramsay Hall mini-kitchen; doing the same in my friend's Oxford apartment, I figured, would be a piece of cake--or rather, pie. I did not have a pie tin, but I was still in possession of a borrowed cake pan (I really should get that back....) and I figured that would work in a clinch.
But the turkey was not to prove so easy. First of all, while the stereotype of American mega-servings may not be altogether warranted, it is true that British appliances are not capable of producing anything remotely resembling the scale of American feasts. Brits are in general, I have found, not as likely to attempt from-scratch cooking as we are, and certainly not in the same proportions. I therefore had a moment of panic when I realized that my friend's oven looked only slightly more than half the size of mine at home in Minnesota. Even if I managed to find a turkey of sufficient size, and a pan in which to cook it, I wasn't sure that I would be able to fit it in the oven. And I hadn't seen an oven any bigger elsewhere.
Of course, this was a big "if". Oh, how I missed my mom's beautiful Dutch oven! I borrowed my friend Julia's roasting pan, with dimensions inferior to the oven's, but it looked awfully small. So, the night before our Thanksgiving celebration was to commence, I made a run to Argos. This is an amazing store: instead of having its stock out for browsing, Argos' customers instead browse a catalog and bring their orders numbers to the counter; when the order is ready, a pleasant, feminine voice intones, "Order Number 244, please proceed to your collection point." Not only is the Sears-Roebuck novelty a treat for Americans, but it is also a mecca for all things cheap. I was able to get a roasting pan for only 5 pounds! I figured I would use whichever pan--Argos' or Julia's--was bigger, but since I couldn't compare them not in-hand, I went ahead and bought the pan.
They were pretty much the same size, and since the use of Julia's was free, I next proceeded to the grocery story to get a turkey; I would get the biggest turkey that would fit in the pan and just pray that it would fit in the oven. But then, a new problem: no turkey at Tesco!
I should point out that I was on rather a tight schedule. You see, I am a proponent of peak efficiency, and as I was meeting someone at 2 for tea, I decided to postpone my run until right before the turkey madness. I figured I would have plenty of time to get in an hour-long run, meet Julia at 4, get the pan, go to Argos, pick up the turkey, head to Jason's, marinate the turkey, run back to St. Catz, take a shower, and appear clean and make-up-ed in time for the special, once-termly "Catz Night" at 7 o'clock. But, of course, this plan did not allow for too many hitches, and at this point, I was starting to get a little anxious. It was almost 4:30! So, pans clunking against eachother, I literally ran next door to Sainsbury's local, a small version of the rival major UK grocery store chain. No turkey there either! Only one choice left: Sainsbury's Central, which I knew for a fact sold turkeys.
But it was also on the other side of High Street. More pan-clunking.
4:40pm: I arrived at Sainsbury's, panting. I rushed to the frozen meat section, where I happily discovered my fears of avaricious American turkey-buyers to be unfounded. Using Julia's pan as a means of measurement, I made my selection and joined the queue for the register (I wasn't about to wrestle the 6 kg turkey through the self-checkout line). But of course, I was still wearing my running clothes! I must have looked a sorry sight indeed, dirty, sweating underneath my earmuffs, and lugging a 13 lb turkey and roasting pans to boot. The cashier made some pleasant, mildly amused comment, and I was on my way. Exit Sainsbury's, 4:50pm.
I then ran as fast as I could to Jason's Jericho apartment--well, as fast as I could carrying a huge frozen turkey. This is when I had another crisis moment: How does one marinate a FROZEN turkey? I had completely forgotten that Sainsbury's did not sell the fresh variety, and waiting for it to thaw was simply not an option. In order for it to be cooked for the 5pm Saturday ETA, I had to get it in the oven by 11 or 12, so I could not just marinate in the morning.
But necessity is the mother of invention. Thus, 5pm Friday found Jason and me hunched over his kitchen sink, me holding a naked turkey by the legs upside down, and Jason pouring hot water into the cavity. After 10-15 minutes, "Georgia Brown," as I dubbed her, was thawed enough for us to imagine infusing her with marinade. So I mixed it up, poured it over, left Jason with instructions to baste it whenever he remembered, and ran off home to St. Catz on the other side of town, praying that Georgia would be thawed by tomorrow at 11 am.
But this was only one part of the meal. So, less than 16 hours later I was on the road again bound for Sainsbury's, my bike still unusable (see earlier entry). I had not had the gumption or the muscle strength to buy all the ingredients for the stuffing and pumpkin pie on the previous night's turkey expedition, so I returned to Sainsbury's in search of the various spices, bread crumbs, eggs, etc. necessary for the other courses. Further testament of the Brits' lack of affinity for from-scratch cooking: every one of the three grocery stores was out of nutmeg due to an abysmally small stock, and cloves didn't even exist in ground form! Thankfully, there was something resembling what we know as pumpkin pie spice, so I figured I would be able to supplement this with the spices I was able to obtain.
Once again, I was in a bit of a time crunch, because I needed to get the pie baked before we could start roasting the turkey (remember the small British ovens? This wouldn't have been a problem with my normal American one!!). So, after having visited all three grocery stores AGAIN, I ran to Jason's apartment to throw the pumpkin pie together.
I must say, in the next step I had the easy job. Jason had enlisted the help of Liz, a Canadian with an admirable appreciation of American Thanksgiving, to help with the day's preparations. So, while I monitored the pie, they went over to another friend's house to get a table. You see, Jason's apartment, while beautiful and roomy, had come unfurnished except for the bare necessities. Evidently, the landlord had thought a large table and more than three chairs superfluous. Another (English) friend, Ben, had kindly volunteered his table to make up for the deficiency, but Jason and Liz would have to fetch it from his housemates because he was out of town.
As Jason and Liz can attest, one mile is a whole lot farther than you think when you're lugging a big wooden table. I had just taken the pie out of the oven when I received a phone call from Jason. "We're at the end of Richmond Road [Jason's street]. Liz can't go anymore. Help?"
Meanwhile, I had found to my great delight that Georgia Brown had indeed thawed to a remarkable degree on the countertop (I know you're supposed to thaw the turkey in the fridge or in cold water in the sink, but this was an emergency!). But we couldn't find the giblets! Jason and Liz took great amusement in seeing me half-submerged in the turkey's innards, but even their laughter (alternating with revulsion) could not reveal where in the world Georgia had hidden her giblet bag! I managed to dislodge the still-partially frozen neck, but the giblets were nowhere to be found. Finally coming to the conclusion that Brits don't concern themselves with such things as giblets, we gave up, did a final basting, and put Georgia in the oven. 12:30 pm.
Since there was nothing we could do for the next two hours, I took off to get some work done in the interim; I had brought my computer and essay-writing materials, but needed to print off an article, which could only be done (for free) back at St. Catz. Then at 2:30 I was back, primed for basting (basting the turkey, that is, not me) and raring to start on the stuffing.
This was another example of cultural variations rendering culture-specific items like recipes problematic. For the record: British grated parmesan cheese is stronger than American, bacon less greasy, and bread crumbs much more bland. I'll leave it at that. Just something to keep in mind.
The next few hours were a blur of essay writing, back-massaging (Liz was still sore!), and turkey basting, until around 5 o'clock when other members of our guests started arriving. As we should have expected, people came late, but this was okay, because Georgia Brown was taking her sweet ol' time in the oven. But eventually she was done. We cut open her beautifully browned skin, and guess what we found when we broke the skin on the neck side of the carcass: her giblets! They had been inside the whole time, but evidently we had missed them frozen in the bottom of the cavity. Well, so much for giblet gravy.
But after all the fuss, all the mishaps, this past Thanksgiving was one of the best I have ever had. We had around 10 people from our course show up, and some other invitees from other life-venues. Everyone brought something, and when everything came together, we had one amazingly traditional Thanksgiving dinner! We even had homemade candied yams--and were they delicious!
Even more importantly, though, the whole event was permeated with an atmosphere of relaxation and camaraderie that none of us had yet experienced in Oxford. It was so wonderful to exchange stories, jokes, and conversation in an atmosphere of complete freedom, in which food served as a tangible manifestation of the bonds being formed and shared. I am told that the meal is one of the absolute essentials of any Alpha course; I can well understand why, for this Thanksgiving showed me how God can use food to bring people together, whether that is in a table-conduced back massage or a laugh shared over a bottle of wine. When we went around and shared what we were thankful for, I couldn't help but thank God for the beauty of the scene that we had worked so hard to create.
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