Thanksgiving Part 1 - Wednesday

         Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday--there's something so special about spending time with family, cooking, and then sitting down together to enjoy a meal you've all worked hard on. So it was very difficult this year knowing that I would not be home for Thanksgiving. I had planned to go to Aurebekk for a Thanksgiving dinner with my Norwegian family, but due to the Covid situation, that was not possible. 

        My amazing teacher, Marianne, knowing how much this meant to me, decided that we would host our very own Thanksgiving for NLC. We were supposed to be in Oslo this week with the art class, but instead we are all going to have a Thanksgiving feast. I was put in charge, and had to come up with a list of all of the foods and ingredients so that the school could order them. 

        We have classes in the morning and don't have all of Thursday to cook, so Wednesday we decided to get a head start and make the pies, the cranberry sauce, and begin the stuffing. Bjorn, Alina, Ananda, Sofia, Emilie and I got free range over the kitchen. Marianne had bought most of the supplies that we needed, and we could cook to our hearts content. 

        Of course, I've never actually made Thanksgiving Dinner by myself, so most of it I had no idea how to make. I had some family recipes, for the stuffing and applesauce, but I was still in over my head. (Our teachers entirely entrusted the cooking of the biggest meal of the year to a group of students--majority of whom have never celebrated Thanksgiving, much less cooked for it!)

        We set up at a few of the cafeteria tables, and quickly noticed some issues. There were only three pie crusts when we were supposed to make 9 pies, and there were no pecans! Already stressed, we had a rocky start trying to figure out where to go from there. We got in touch with a friend who has a car, and she and Sofia went off to get the ingredients we were missing--pie crusts, pecans, corn syrup, and vanilla extract. After two stores, they couldn't find any of it. We decided a walnut pie with maple syrup could be just as good, and determined to make our own crusts. 

        While they were gone, the rest of us--now joined by Fabian, Eskil, and Elise--got to work on the pie fillings and the stuffing. We needed to peel 36 apples for the pies and applesauce, as well as sweet potatoes for our "pumpkin" pie. (Along with pecans apparently, you can't find canned pie pumpkin in Norway). We also couldn't find packets of stuffing mix, so we had to make our own bread cubes. Bjorn worked to painstakingly cube an entire loaf of bread before we discovered the industrial slicer which made the job significantly quicker--it still took a tremendous amount of time to cut all five loaves. 

        Meanwhile, the rest of us minced the broccoli, onions, herbs, and mushrooms for the stuffing. We were tripling my family recipe, so it was a heck of a lot of mincing. Eventually, Sofia returned with the walnuts and syrup, we got the sweet potatoes boiling, and had the applesauce cooking on the stove. Some people started making the pie crusts, and we separated and baked the bread cubes so they'd dry. I was still cutting broccoli. 

        Everybody kept coming to me and asking for advice, since I'm the resident Thanksgiving expert. Naturally, I Face-timed my mom. It was an incredibly chaotic evening, and our cooking lasted well though evening meal. All of the other students came in and found three tables roped off, covered in bread and dough and apples. I'm so glad that we decided to start on Wednesday, because including the time it took the pies to cook, we spent almost 6 hours in the kitchen. It's time consuming when you're cooking for so many people. 

        There was one moment when the bread came out of the oven, and Elise simultaneously cut into the rosemary, that the scents combined and I got such a wonderful feeling of Thanksgiving. It smelled like our stuffing, and it smelled perfect! We were so grateful for all of the help--even though they're not in our class, we've promised Eskil and Fabian plates of food, or at least slices of pie for their help. (I bargained with Marianne earlier to let Elise eat with us). 

        Thursday we're starting the day by giving presentations about our home countries/states to the school, and then I anticipate we'll spend the rest of the day cooking. Even though I'm not at home, it felt really wonderful cooking with all of my friends today. By the end, we were all standing together looking over the pies, so proud of our hard work. We had spent the day cooking, experimenting, stressing, laughing, and learning--stealing bits of food here and there--and in all of that, I really think that we captured the essence of what makes Thanksgiving so important to me; that we did it all together. 

        I think this picture perfectly encapsulates the magic and joy of Thanksgiving. This was four hours in, and it's still all smiles!