Having Thanksgiving in the Old World - Not Easy! But worth it!

We just finished Thanksgiving dinner. It's early since a) we don't get Thanksgiving Thursday off in Norway, and b) any later and we would lose two of our guests to offshore assignments. Besides, did you know Thanksgiving is in October in Canada? So why not Sunday November 15th? Our friends were quite excited about experiencing Thanksgiving dinner. Let's see, we had two Norwegians, 3 Russians, 3 Poles, and one from Khazakstan. Not one had ever had pumpkin pie. :(

In order to fit 10 adults, we had to buy another table and some dishes and silverware. The IKEA table cost less than the turkey! Turkey is not common here, and we bought an organic turkey from an agricultural school. Then later we saw an ad for turkey in a grocery store a short bus ride away for only about $2 per pound. Sheesh.

We even had the "kiddie table" for our almost-four-year-old guest.

We found the turkey. Now what about stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie? Whew. Stuffing needs sage. We looked in all the groceries, including the foreign ones, but I ended up finding it in the UK on a business trip. Cranberries are a lot like tittebaer here, but we wanted real cranberry sauce. Again, the UK trip saved the day. We could handle mashed potatoes and gravy, even here. Green bean casserole traditionally takes cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onion rings. Fuggidaboutit! Ed made up a great recipe with onions, bacon and balsamic vinegar. Pumpkin pie is almost as essential as turkey for Thanksgiving. We smuggled a can of pumpkin and two cans of evaporated milk into the country this summer. Anastasia brought pie plates last winter, and I've been learning to make pie crust without Crisco. The pumpkin pie was a hit!

The last part of our traditional dinner is orange rolls. Our friends from Thanksgivings past, the Winslows, introduced them into our tradition, and a quick e-mail exchange got us the recipe. Of course, we have no muffin tin. I made the orange rolls and laid them out on a baking sheet, all beautiful and puffy. Then came the tragedy. The oven is small, and they had to go near the top of the oven to fit over the stuffing casserole. Burned! After cutting off the black, we had "topless" rolls. That was the only disappointment.

Eating isn't everything. The point of the day is to have fun with family and friends. Our old friends with the orange rolls reminded us of Ninety-nine, a card game. Back in the Puget Sound, it was a great game for the inevitable Thanksgiving power outage! Here in Bergen, we had a great time playing it around the coffee table. There was lots of laughter and mock hurt feelings.

We're really glad we did Thanksgiving. We miss our old friends and families, so lift a glass to us when you have your Thanksgiving dinner!