Italian Thanksgiving

So this thanksgiving turned out pretty good! I ended up cooking for about 12 people, and it was just about the perfect amount of food. Mom's recipes helped so much! Everybody loved the artichoke stuffing recipe and lots of people said that the turkey was the best they had ever eaten in their life. I can't really take that much credit for the turkey though, it is just the Italian philosophy on food that made it so good! I bought the beast at the central market here in Florence and it was just more fresh and delicious than anything you could find in the states. It had never been frozen, and I even had to pick a few feathers off myself!

Finding all the little ingredients was the biggest trick though. Luckily I had Marco to help me out, but even with him it was so hard to explain some of the things I was looking for. The entire concept of canned food seemed totally foreign to him! Canned pumpkin was absolutely out of the question, as was any sort of cranberry. People had at least heard of sweet potatoes, but nobody seemed to carry any. Other things like "sour cream" took a long time to figure out since they don't translate at all in Italian -- sour cream here is known as "Greek Yogurt." Also, you have to say goodbye to any sort of concentrate, like the mint and vanilla which the brownies call for, so unfortunately that desert was definitely out of the question.

I also was extremely lucky that everything turned out so good because I didn't have any measuring utensils -- but that is really what cooking is about I guess, just going with what feels right. I also had a lot of help from the guests here. There was a jewish woman who works as a chef in Spain who helped me make caramel from scratch for the apple pie, and also the gravy once the turkey was done. Also, just having 20 people here to consult with on cooking turkey or mashed potatoes really helped a lot. Not that many of them really knew how, but combined they all had enough good ideas to make the thing a success. So all in all, here was the menu:

15 lb Turkey (bought and cooked the same day)
Artichoke stuffing
Mashed potatoes (which Marco peeled)
F*ing good Gravy (Turkey drippings prepared by the spanish chef)
Pumpkin pie (made from some sort of fresh squash)
Salad (contributed by Tony[canadian] and Justice[from new york])
Cheese with fruit (contributed by Tony and Justice)
Sauted vegetables (contributed by Colin[from new york])
Pumpkin Pie (with help from Huey[aussie girl])
Carmel Apple Pie (With help from the spanish chef)

All this with about 22 hours of work on my part! I really appreciate what Mom goes through every year now. I never realized how much work it took took to organize a feast like this.

Also, I had to cook everything in two different buildings about 5 blocks apart, so that made things a little bit more difficult. It was really nice that everyone seemed to jump behind this idea... I mean, of course all backpackers would love to have a good home-cooked meal, but I really appreciated that everyone got excited and willing to help out to make the meal possible. In the least, it was nice to be able to share a purely American tradition with people from around the world who had been curious about it but really knew nothing of it before.

Everyone seemed to love the food though! Even the people who would never imagine eating food this way. The pumpkin pie was one of the biggest hits, and that was from a bunch of Australians and Italians who could never imagine eating pumpkin in combination with sugar. Not only that, but most of the Australians and Germans had never even eaten turkey before!