Thanksgiving (and SOON the european adventure)

Happy Thanksgiving friends! I wanted to write and tell you about my great adventures creating Thanksgiving in the lovely seaside city of Galway on the coast of southern Ireland. It began with several excursions to the local grocery store, a handful of called in favors to find a turkey, well, two turkeys, and borrowing of pots, plates and glasses from a lovely cluster of Irish friends--friends of my dear darling friend who is living here with her boyfriend for the time being. She too is going home to good old Minnesota, but she'll be back in time for Christmas, unlike yours truly. Ok back to the food, which is of course the most important part of Thanksgiving... well sure behind people and family and stuff...I suppose. ;) So yesterday the whole process began with the first wave of the great attack: The List. For anyone who knows my beloved mother, you will understand the importance, nay, sanctity of The List. In fact The List is so vitally important that my Mom made doubly certain that I had started mine days ago (What she didn't know is that much of it was mental...hehe). Anyway, The List (in my Mom's case) is basically the battle plan, the master plan, the grand scheme, in fact it is everything. So back to the first wave of the great attack. Yesterday friend Lael and I did the unthinkable--we handled, coddled, washed the turkeys. Plural. I hate touching raw meat. But I managed, both Lael and I touched bits of raw bird that I never ever wanted to have to handle. It was a moment of true pride when we saw them clean and ready. As we had slightly frozen birds we were unable to brine, we were unable to salt rub, and so we did the best we could and we improvised. There on the table sat a can of hard cider, "hmmm" I thought. So in went the turkey, in went the cider, in went clove, star anise, salt, herbs and water. And thus our turkey, Albert, marinated. Alfred found his way into the kitchen sink in a similar bath but topped off with ice cubes. Lael and I crossed our fingers. The rest of the afternoon I intermittenly crumbled the crackers, I mixed seasonings, I mixed spices, and dearest friends, best of all, after several episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" I made pie. My baking guru (well, one of them) the best and most beautiful lady I know (who, by the way turned 89 yesterday), my Grammy, has discovered the loveliest pie crust recipe ever to grace the earth. So two gorgeous pumpkin pies emerged one cooled, cut and plated and the other nestled in the one and only borrowed pie pan. Day 1 of the plan had been executed. This morning I hauled my sorry self out of bed at 8:15 to prepare Albert's roasting pan--carrots, leeks, onions, a good rinse, and Lael was roused to help put Albert in his roasting bag. Out she came with a grumble but the bird made his way into the bag and into the oven. And we made our ways back to bed. The rest of the day we cleaned like mad, took a golden Albert from the oven, made gravy (batch number one), made the first batch of stuffing, made the escalloped corn, the mashed potatoes (a HUGE quantity), and put dear Alfred into the oven. Apparently hard cider brined turkey makes excellent gravy. The gravy has always been of utmost importance to me and this was perfect--creamy, salty, flavorful--perfect. Ahhh ecstasy. Lael mulled the wine and our guests arrived, Irish cream of veg soup, brownies, toddler, two six year olds, plates, bowls, and more wine in tow. We had a total of 11 people for Thanksgiving, 3 of them 6 or under. Everything was lovely: veg soup and bread, mulled wine, two kinds of stuffing (one veg and one sausage), escalloped corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, sparkling wine, and brownies. It was lovely. It all turned out, it was all yummy, scrumptious, and delicious. The whole night, the food, the friends (old and new), was great--such a grown up experience. In fact, as they say in Ireland, "It was feckin' gorgeous."

I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and this year I am thankful for friends and family, for safe travels, and for realizing what a world of opportunities is out there, and also for realizing that there is no place like home!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,
Sara

finally finishing up tanzania!

wow. so it's been forever since i last graced you loyal readers with my wit, poise and well, let's face it, incredible klutzyness and downright ridiculous tendency to have sketchy bathroom catastrophes. Anyway, suffice it to say I'm back. so last i wrote i was in mufindi i believe, but let's skip right along to the amazing iringa safari adventure! so afer my fond farewell to the beloved foxy family i was off to Iringa to meet up with the Tanzanian Minnesota contingent. Well, let's make a long story short, once my dear old Dad and family friend Ken came on the scene we were off to Ruaha wildlife park and there we visited our wild savannah friends--most notably: little lady cheetah who chirped so sweetly to call her twin babies before slinking all three away into the night, a gorgeous leopard who catwalked across a bright sunlit dry riverbed of a runway, and perhaps my favorite, the two newly gorged lions. Actually, they deserve a paragraph themselves. We happened upon two nice sleepy male lions lying near the dry riverbed, happily content after their feast. There they lay fat and sleek, the one gorged to the point of true rotundness, his ballooning tummy up in the air. As we watched mr. lion flapped his massive paws in the air before literally groaning and flopping over onto his other side as if to say "uhhhh, soooo full, soooo full. why oh why did I eat that last bit of wildebeast? so wrong but it felt so right." As we continued to watch he continued to slowly flop from side to side every couple of minutes in his vain attempt to get comfy. It was actually one of the funniest animal antics I've ever seen. Other than my chubby lion boys there was the usual elephant, giraffe, zebra, and birdy experiences. Actually one of the coolest things that happened was being awakened one night by the low, earth shaking growls of a male lion outside our safari camp area. It was one of the most oddly beautiful things I've ever heard or experienced. It was so soulful, unworldly, physically gripping, and addictive. I listened for several minutes and when he'd finally roared his claim on land and lionesses into the sky, and all was quiet, I waited up hoping to hear more.
The rest of my time in Tanzania was lovely, I stayed with some wonderful missionaries and being with family, Daddy!, and good family friend, Ken!, was amazing. We all got to visit a school where the students performed traditional dances, SO COOL!!!, and an acrobatic type show as well as some serious athletics--namely leaping over an incrementally raised string. It was just absolutely cool. Someday I'll be able to post pictures...
So that basically wraps up Tanzania. It ended up being a really good experience, it was hard but I learned alot about myself and the world, and honestly wasn't that the goal? Of course I also had some pretty amazing adventures and left with some crazy stories. I am glad to have moved on (for quite some time now...oops!), but I will miss Tanzania and the people I met there.

Well my dears in the interest of keeping up it's time to be moving right along to....drum roll...the European Extravaganza!

I'll be writing about that tomorrow, really, I promise!

Lots of love!