thanksgiving

My very favorite of holidays, without a doubt. This was my third Thanksgiving in Frankfurt, and . . . fifth? away from home overall, so I'm pretty used to missing my family on Thanksgiving. Still, Thanksgiving with good friends in Frankfurt (plus Mandie joining from Cologne!) was excellent. Everyone brought or made something to share (even my friends who had just gotten back from Australia), and I made:

+ mashed potatoes (with Greek yogurt, like Rachel says to do it)

+ cornbread stuffing (adapted from here -- no sausage, and subbing vegetable broth for chicken broth)

+ mushroom gravy (this one, which is a bit hard to follow as far as amounts go, but I used 500g of white button mushrooms and 800g of vegetable broth, added over time as needed, and it was amazingly good)

+ caramelized corn with fresh mint from the NY Times, which I made for the third year running! Its first appearance was at Thanksgiving 2009, where I was turned into a pumpkin.

+ pumpkin pie (from here, plus homemade whipped cream that I accidentally almost whipped all the way into butter)

+ raspberry pie (Katherine-style: Betty Crocker-esque double crust made with all butter, filling of frozen raspberries, some sugar, and some flour all tossed together, a few pats of butter here and there. Delicious.)

+ cranberry sauce (okay, I didn't so much make it as pop open the lid on the can, but the can of jellied cranberry sauce is one place where I don't mess with tradition. I was completely happy to leave turkey off the list (there would not have been turkey at all were it not for Kylie's last-minute decision to purchase and roast turkey legs!), but I don't mess around when it comes to my Ocean Spray.)

The stars of the show, though, were Mandie's green bean casserole (totally homemade, if only because you can't just go out and buy a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup here) and Rebecca's honey spice cheesecake with some kind of graham cracker-esque crust. Deadly.

I'll make it home for Thanksgiving again one of these years, but this was a mighty fine expat Thanksgiving.