This year we celebrated our first American Thanksgiving, a proper feast with other people for the first time in three years. As Thanksgiving lands on my birthday every 5,6, or 11 years I was happy to do without it our first year in England. However, as an ex-pat sometimes there are cultural traditions from ‘home’ that you forget you really do miss. It was not until we started preparing for this year’s feast that I found the memories of past Thanksgivings all coming back. I have celebrated so many Thanksgivings in Europe growing up in England, Germany, and Italy and this years was another one for the memory book. A big thank you to my amazing friends and hosts for this wonderful feast!
We celebrated with my American expat friend who is married to an English guy, their kids, and two other English families. It was a really fun experience. We started off with mulled cider and an array of canapes, had our Thanksgiving dinner, played a Thanksgiving themed quiz, shared what we were thankful for on the back of leaves, and finished with desserts. The kids even put together a ‘haunted house’ for us to explore during our evening together. I think the best part was the conversation and experiencing the cultural differences. For example one of the dishes was a jello salad with cherry cola, creme cheese, pineapples, bing cherries, and walnuts. I had never had it before but found it very delicious. The whole ‘salad’ description was a bit off putting to the English crowd, as well as it being served with the rest of the main courses and side dishes when it was really a ‘pudding’ (which is the english word for ‘dessert’). This really reminded me about getting teased in the US for loving to eat ‘beans on toast’ which is a cultural norm food here in the UK. There was also talk about beer as the hosts managed to find Coors Light beer. While I normally would not drink this in the states, it seemed only fitting for an ex-pat Thanksgiving in England.
We split up all the dishes between the families and everyone brought their part to the Thanksgiving dinner. I brought my apple pie made with coconut oil which you can find the recipe for on yesterday’s post.
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R E C O M M E N D E D
P O S T S BY K A T E
