Thanksgiving in China!

Finally, my blog is accessible. For the last 3 weeks, I have been unable to update my blog due to extenuating circumstances like China blocking the Blogger website. But now it works - I have even one more thing for which to be thankful.

So this year, I spent Thanksgiving in China. This was also the first year that I spent it away from my family. This was also supposed to be the first year that I should have cooked a turkey on my own.

Spending Thanksgiving (from this point on - TG) in China was a treat. There are no turkeys in Yichang. We went to Wuhan (5 hour bus ride one way) for a day trip. Beth and I had the responbility to go turkey hunting. After exploring Wal-Mart, we eventually found one at Metro (The Sam's Club like store from Germany). I bought a 7.5 kilogram turkey and a 6.4 kg turkey. I did the conversions wrong and ended up buying 30 pounds of turkey instead of 20 (even though I thought 7.5+6.4 kgs converted to 10 pounds). We named the turkeys Bob and Esther.

Spending TG in China is a treat especially when you spend it with great people. We had 16 people at our dinner. We rented a banquet room at the hotel next my apartment. The tables were huge. They had lazy Susan's. Lazy Susan's are awesome!!!!!!! 5 Chinese friends joined us along with a Venezualen, Madagasi (who practically hails from France), a Ukranian, and several Americans. It was very nice. I was stuffed. We had sweet potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, eggplant, cornbread (Thanks Amy!), biscuits (Thanks Brad!), and many other things. Beth made several pumpkin pies and they were phenomenal!!!!

So I tried so hard to organize a way that I could cook the turkeys but I failed. Our ovens are toaster ovens so they cannot cook anything larger than a small pie. Often, 2 pieces of toast is nearly too much. I asked around for places to cook until the zero hour. Finally, I found a rotisserie place that cooked ducks. They told me they could cook the turkeys. I asked many questions like how big is too big? How long will it take? What do I need to do to the turkeys? They told me my turkey weight was good, that it would take 2 hours, and that I had to clean them.

I show up Thursday at noon with 2 turkeys. The cooker told me they were too big. Then he told me that I should have marinaded them. All this after he told me that my weights were good and that I needed to clean the turkeys. This was all after I had to pull the heart out along with the lungs. I was a little miffed. Not at pulling out the lungs and heart but because the cooker decided to cut the turkeys in half so they would cook right in the rotisserie. Of course it all worked out. I didn't get to cook it this year, maybe next year.

The day ended with a short time of cleaning and then a beautiful hour of watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special DVD my mom sent to me. She is SuperMom!