Thanksgiving is just another day in Germany

This is my first time not being home for Thanksgiving, or being somewhere where NOBODY celebrates it either. I found this holiday to be quite difficult to not be home watching football, eating Mom’s turkey, yummy sides and purple stuff. I decided that the least I could do was make us a traditional dinner and we could watch football. The only problem is that since Thanksgiving Thursday was not a holiday here, we just ordered pizza and watched the games. However, I did decide to cook a full dinner for that weekend.

I have to preface this with the fact that I have never cooked a turkey before, but I was not afraid of the challenge. Fortunately, I had my InStyle and Real Simple magazines that my mom sent over in a care package. They had some great recipes for doing a proper dinner. So here is the menu I came up with:

Turkey with honey/fig glaze
Cranberry orange dressing
Mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots with white wine gravy
Taditional bread stuffing
Green bean casserole

I made my list of things I needed at the store, translated them to German, and went off to the markets. One of the things I love most here are the Farmers markets on Saturday mornings. You get really good organic produce and have a great selection. I was able to get everything I needed except for the meat and chicken stock. Not a problem though because Alex took me to a grocery store for that. I also had to use a converter to figure out oven settings and measurements since the recipes were for the US and everything we have in the kitchen is German.

As I was cooking our friend Sebastian called and I told Alex to invite him over to join us. I figured the more around the table the better! (Except we have a very small table!) Here are some pictures of how it came out. I have to say, it was all very delicious and I impressed myself with my ability to put it together.