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.

The British Are a Bunch of Preverts

One of the things you hear Brits say quite often about Americans is that we are prudes. I happen to disagree, but it's no wonder they think that. This is the country where you can see an hour long TV show on vaginoplastys, I'm not even kidding. And this wasn't HBO or something, this was BBC, which is available in every household. And it was during primetime. So I shouldn't be surprised that not 10 minutes from our house this weekend, the world's largest erotica show was taking place:

http://www.erotica-uk.com/

We happened to be headed to Ikea today to replace a couple plates we've broken during our stay here, which took us past the entrance to said erotica show. Let me digress for a minute and explain how truly crappy it is to not own a car anymore. The Ikea in London is no more then 10 miles away, probably somewhere around 7 or 8. In a car, it'd take me about 15-20 minutes depending on traffic. But sans car is another story. The journey starts with a 10 minute walk to the London Overground. On Sundays this service runs once every half hour, so after 20 minutes of waiting we go 2 stops, which takes 5 minutes, and switch to the London Underground. After a 5 minute wait for the tube the ride is another 5 minutes just to get to the Ikea shuttle pick up. It's supposed to be every half hour on the hour, and we arrived at 2:57pm. Apparently the driver is impatient so we then waited 30 minutes for our 5 minute ride to the store.

Grand total: 1 hour, 20 minutes and 3 modes of transport. Marathon runners could have beat us there on foot.

Anyway, back to the porn. We show up at the Overground station which is literally on the doorstep of the convention hall. And let me tell you, I saw more corsets, stockings, and all around freak shows than I could have imagined. I'm not judging, to each their own. It's just incredible the draw this thing had. To be fair, there were tons of people that could have been Jim from accounting or Lisa from HR. These could have been the people that babysit your kids or do your taxes. I guess it takes all types. And who am I to talk, me and my porn 'stache would have fit in quite nicely.

Movember Update

So I promised some updates throughout the month of my 'stache, and obviously I have let you down. What can I say, I've been busy grooming and shampooing and reliving the glory days of when I was a 15 year old boy. But fear not, I have picture goodness:



Since I have been horrible at posting, now's a good time to catch you up. We have decided on our final trip before Lori moves back home. Initially we were looking at Iceland, but despite their economy being in the crapper they still think it's appropriate to charge outrageous airfare. I love the northern lights and baked fish heads, but honestly Iceland, you're not that special. So in the end we ended up booking a trip to Egypt. Yeah, let that sink in for a bit. We're gonna spend 3 nights in Cairo checking out the pyramids and the general awesomeness that is Egypt.

We've also got Lori's sister and man friend flying in next week to celebrate a proper British Thanksgiving with us. Since our oven isn't big enough for a turkey (and because you can't find them here this time of year) we're going with game hens, or as they're also known, Poussin. Yeah, it's a fun word. We'll also be serving up some corn bread, cranberry pear sauce, and hazelnut pumpkin pie.

That's it really. I'll post a final pic of the 'stache, and I'me even contemplating keeping it through the holidays. I've gotten kind of attached.

Election

Suffice to say, I was incredibly bummed this year to miss out on the election. Not so much the months leading up to it, but the energy of the first Tuesday in November every 4 years is in a world of its own, especially in what will likely be one of the most important elections of my life. Dropping my mail-in ballot in the Royal Post box just wasn't the same as standing in line and getting my Democracy on.

It has been interesting the past few months watching from a distance and through the filter of British newspapers. In fact if I hadn't been home during the primary season I probably would have never known John McCain was even running. The people here love Obama. Below are two papers from the morning after the election:



Say what you will about Obama, but people are going nuts all over for him. Obviously there are some lofty expectations for the man, but at least people are excited and involved. And if people outside our country are exicted that's a good start.

We did our part over here to be part of the historal night, including staying up until 3 am until the result was all but official. It wasn't nearly as awesome as my usual tradition of leaving work early, casting my vote with my fellow citizens, and eating Chipotle while watching CNN for 5 hours. But I'm just happy I got to witness it at all, and hopefully those of you back home embraced the opportunity to take part.

Hamburglar

This weekend a fortress of solitude was violated. We heard what we believed to be a car alarm going off Saturday night, so we didn't pay much attention. But 10 minutes later when it was still going we peeked out the window, only to see no car alarm was going off. Instead it was the basement flat's alarm system. We called the building management, who called us back to tell us she was calling the police, who in turn called us to find out if anything was still happening. Mind you, about 25 minutes had elapsed and I was pretty confident the burglars had not stuck around. They decided not to send anyone out, even though I thought the purpose of a burglar alarm was so the police would show up if you got burgled. That's how it works in America, I guess here it's sole purpose is to irritate your neighbors.

Long story short, nobody was hurt and I don't think they've caught anyone. The perps only made it to one bedroom before they bolted. This only 2 months after we saw a man get arrested on the corner for suspicion of grand theft. Apparently I need to rename my blog to mikeinfallujah.com.

Happy Movember

Yes, I said Movember. A few weeks back I found a flyer on my desk advertising some weird new month. I initially thought maybe congress had changed the Julian calendar like they did daylight savings, but apparently every November men are encouraged to grow moustaches for prostate cancer research. It started in Australia and has grown over the past few years. Here in the UK, the money goes to the Wales Cancer foundation, or something. This concerns me slightly...if their mideical research is half as good as their dialect, I think cancer might actually come out stronger.

So anyway, even though I haven't collected any money or got any sponsors, I decided to show my solidarity by participating. I haven't decided if I'm going for the traditional 'stash, or full out handle bars. I'll try and post some pictures of the rediculousness over the new few weeks. If you want to get involved check out the web site below.

http://www.movember.com/