ringrazimento

Thanksgiving was a cultural exchange for us this year. We made plans with our friends Lucia and Luciano and their two daughters Giulia and Emma to celebrate at our place on the Saturday after Thankgiving (no Thursday off from work here!). Luciano is a hunter, so he brought the turkey… [OK, so I made that up. I don’t think Turkeys roam free around here since they are native to the Americas, but Luciano came to dinner in his hunting get-up and the photo op was just too compelling ] We tried to make the menu as authentic as possible- Turkey (7.3 kg, just a touch too big for our oven and on special order from the local butcher), stuffing with celery and fresh sage (we had to cube our own tuscan and home-made whole wheat bread, though, no Pepperidge farm bag stuffing), lemon-ginger sweet potatoes (real orange sweet potatoes are not easy to find, had to get them from an asian greengrocer in Bologna), gravy (grandma Krantz’s slurey recipe, I think she’d be proud), corn bread, rolls, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (thanks to an emergency thanksgiving shipment from mom), green beans, pumpkin pie and whipped cream, and ‘frutti di bosco’ crisp (wild berry). Lucia offered to help make the pies the night before, and bring rolls, green beans, wine and a movie for the kids for after dinner. When she asked how she was supposed to prepare the green beans I gave her the whole explanation of Minnesota green bean hot dish before letting her know that anything she wanted to bring was, of course, OK, if not preferable. She confessed she didn’t know where she would find this fabled condensed cream of mushroom soup nor the crispy French fried onions. Instead she brought green beans canned from her garden this summer and thin sliced homemade pancetta (italian un-smoked bacon)- here I’ve posted a few pictures of the kids making little hay bundles of green beans wrapped in pancetta- mmmm! They were good! The kids also made the ubiquitous hand turkeys, transformed into segnalposti (place markers) with shaved down and sliced corks. At dinner we took turns sharing reasons why we’re thankful this year- I think the most agreed upon was ‘new friends.’