Happy Thanksgiving

Even though it was just another Thursday here in London, inside our flat Thanksgiving was in full swing. With a few twists. Since our oven would not fit a turkey, we had to settle for some poussins. And since we don't get American football here, we (mostly I) had to settle for espn.com game cast to catch my beloved Cowboys dismantling the Seahawks. But, we still had friends and family, lots of wine, and more food than we could possibly eat. And as this was our first full blown Thanksgiving dinner we've had to cook ourselves, I'd like to give a brief overview of the menu and how it turned out:

Spiced Smashed Sweet Potatoes: I wanted to do them with marshmellows, but we found this recipe instead and it was much better. Basically just bake, mash, and spice.

Cranberry Pear Relish: I was a little leary when it said to use a food processor and we didn't have one, and even more leary when it said to keep the orange peels on. I normally hate cranberry sauce, but I loved this.

Cornbread: Neither of us had ever made it before, and we couldn't find cornmeal anywhere. I had written it off as a failure, but it turned out just like back home.

Black Eyed Peas w/ Stewed Tomatoes: I love black-eyed peas [insert lame joke about the band with the same name]. Tomatoes, not so much. But with enough spices this was probably my favorite side.

Green Beans w/ Carmelized Onions and Almonds: If you're not a fan of nuts, this dish would not thrill you. But luckily I am, and it did.

Roasted Poussins: This was actually the easiest dish we made. Rub and spice the skin and bake for like 40 minutes. It was no deep fried turkey, but it was still fantastic.

Hazelnut Pumpkin Pie: This was the gran finale and the thing I was most excited for. We had to make a few adjustments which made me nervous: swapping hazelnut yogurt for hazelnut creamer, and using digestive biscuits instead of graham crackers. Plus, we had never made pumpkin pie before. But like the kitchen champions we are we overcame diversity and owned that pie. One person said they never eat the crust, and another said they never eat the filling. And there were only empty plates left when we were done.

Not bad for a first Thanksgiving dinner, considering we couldn't find all our ingredients and we were making US recipes with British cooking utinsels (did you know a US cup ≠ UK cup? Luckily we found this out the hard way a couple months ago). Now we can start focusing on Christmas, which the Brits have been doing since Halloween.