A Danish Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a pretty odd holiday when you think about it. It's not about presents, like Christmas. It's not entirely about family, although that's a huge part of it. It's about food. A LOT of food. I've tried to express to my host family the importance of QUANTITY at Thanksgiving. You have to eat like you're going to be fasting for the next 40 days. You have to dress appropriately so you can pack it in. Half the fun is waiting for the turkey thermometer to pop. So imagine the effort I put into making sure this Thanksgiving dinner, my first in a foreign country, is as close to my traditional one as possible. If I have to eat my own body weight in food, it better be good.

Here's how it will go down: I'm cooking for 8, including myself. Some family friends are coming, as well as my host sister Sine and her boyfriend Jimmi. Cooking started at 10 this morning. I first tackled the all-important cranberry sauce. We went to three different grocery stores yesterday in our effort to find cranberries, and eventually stumbled across a magical tower of fresh (!!!) boxes of cranberries. I bought 1 kilo--you can never have enough cranberry sauce--and found a familiar-looking recipe online, provided by Ocean Spray: 3 cups water, 3 cups sugar, and that 1 kilo in the pot. The only slight hiccup I experienced was when the concoction boiled into such a frenzy that it started to rise, rise, rise, almost foaming all over the glittering black stovetop. I quickly turned the heat down and stirred frantically: my first save of the day. Uh oh, I hope I don't have a limited number of "get out of jail free" cards in this adventure.

Next stop: Pumpkin pie. From real pumpkins. Stay tuned.