Thanksgiving Party

Last year we had a bit of a Thanksgiving by ourselves, but this year, with more time, more equipment, more available energy, and more people we know, we had much more of a full-fledged Thanksgiving.  We set it up along with the Carranos, a professor from RIT on sabbatical at KIT and his family. They hosted and we both cooked and between us and the contributions of some of the other guests we had a pretty full spread, including turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, creamed onions, cornbread stuffing, and chicken cordon bleu (provided by a teacher from France who assured us this was her first Thanksgiving).

The turkey is a challenge in Japan for a few reasons.  The first is that they are not commonly sold, which can be fixed by making an order to themeatguy.jp (our internet butcher) as he probably supplies all of Japan with turkey and cranberry sauce in the pre-Thanksgiving time of year.  The second problem is fitting the turkey in the oven.  Japanese ovens are almost entirely countertop models, more like toaster ovens than American ovens.  I had several conversations with the Carranos over the phone discussing the predicted and actual size of the turkey and with both of us measuring our ovens.  We got a really good deal on a used oven and thus have one of the biggest models available in Japan, and it did not fit in theirs, so we had to cook the turkey here and then transport it across town when it was cooked.  The 14lb bird barely, barely fit - we had to put the roasting tray on the actual bottom of the oven itself.  It worked fine though, and we managed not to get any of it on their car when they drove us over, either.  I also made creamed onions and Ana made a chocolate pie and a lemon merengue pie and the lemon meregue was impressively good.  I can't speak for the chocolate because I didn't have any but none of it survived the evening so it can't have been fatal.

We had sumo on TV instead of football.  We don't watch much sumo because we don't have a TV but the Carranos watch enough of it to know what's going on and who to root for.  We were told by several people that it is quite exciting live but we've not had a chance to attend a competition yet.  Anyhow, their man beat the bad guy and there was much rejoicing, fellowship, and food.  Pictures provided by Hayato's trendy iPhone.