Turkey: It Tastes Like Chicken

We have had quite an exciting few days.

On Wednesday I dropped Gusi off at a play date and went with a friend, her driver, and our housekeeper to Marché Karmel downtown to do all of my veggie shopping for Thanksgiving. This is one of the biggest and best markets in town for fruits, vegetables and fish (they also sell meat but I prefer the French butcher's on the airport road) but it is in the dead center of town. Luckily it didn't take us long to get there and when we did, we had a great time around the seafood counters. Jackie was quite good at bargaining each and every price that was offered, so we got good deals on fresh fish (including tuna!), calamari and even mussels. Fruits and veg were easy too except that my friend got a call as we were finishing that we should leave town center since there were riots going on. I had heard there would be a possibility of demonstrations against the government (folks claim that the cost of living here is too high and they are right) by several unions and street merchants so we quickly left. As we drove back to my friend's house we saw tires burning, street merchants' stands burning and it took us quite a while to get back but nothing, thankfully, was ever directed at us. In some countries you'd have to watch out if you were a foreigner in the middle of a mess like this, but not here--here people are complaining about how expensive everything is and want the government to do something about it. You can't blame them.

Jackie and I spent all Wednesday preparing for Thanksgiving and all day Thursday cooking. We had three sets of friends over with their kids. The kids ran wild and Gusi loved it. He's never allowed to do what he was doing (run around screaming, spilling all the toys out onto the floor at once, scribbling on the floor) so he was in heaven. Out of our six friends, two are Americans who have lived overseas for a very long time and haven't had a turkey for Thanksgiving in ages since they are married to foreigners, one is British, one Italian and the last couple is an Australian-Malaysian mix. And yet, we all gave thanks for what we have, for our health, for our family, for the opportunity to live in a country as foreigners and still have a sense of community. Then WE ATE.

I had brined a turkey and then roasted it with oranges, apples and herbs de Provence. It was delicious. We also had sweet potato casserole, apple-sage stuffing, roasted green beans, fresh cranberry sauce (one of PapaGus' colleagues brought me a bag of fresh cranberries from the US on her business trip here just a few days before, bless her heart), scalloped potatoes (which my Malaysian friend made), homemade gravy, glazed carrots, a salad and bread (no rolls, just baguettes). Plus two desserts that the Malaysian mom and Italian mom made. Plus wine. Plus an expanding waistline. We were stuffed. And what did Gusi say about all of this? Well, he loved the cranberry sauce, he loved the sweet potatoes, had some green beans and chomped on the turkey. And even though we had gone through the whole "what is a turkey" thing with him days earlier when talking about the upcoming party, he still would ask for chicken when wanting more turkey. I would say, "Gusi this is turkey," and he'd say, "yes Mama more chicken please." Sigh. At least he ate and had fun.