Thanksgiving Sandwich!

Holidays are arriving! Not only is that apparent in the students' behavior but also the teachers scrambling to gather ingredients for all our favorite holiday dishes. We all have those favorite holiday recipes, but this is China, and not all ingredients are here.

I actually had a huge success this holiday season with preparing food and drinks. I was sooooo proud. I also made 4 crucial cooking mistakes this week, and here they are in the order that they occurred:

1. Monday morning, since I was out of yogurt, I decided to supplement it with a banana. Lara's bunch was getting really ripe and I though she could use a little help finishing them off. Of course around the holidays I need to be thinking, since she was actually preparing to make 4 loaves of banana bread ... oops. It was a good banana!

2. I asked mom for Grandma's bread recipe, since I wanted to see if I could get a hold of all the ingredients to make the bread here. The recipe says to use a mixer, so I actually emailed mom back and asked her if it is possible to make Grandma's bread without the use of a mixer, since I don't have one. Mom of course replied, "That's the way your Great Grandma Z made it." Doh!

3. When I made wassail the second time this week the wassail looked mysteriously orange and didn't taste like apple at all. Later I noticed Lara pouring orange juice into the mulled wine she was making, which I thought was strange as I had just hand squeezed 8 oranges for her to use the juice. We had no idea that we had mistakenly bought orange juice instead of apple juice. I know I'm getting better at reading Chinese, but there were pictures on the containers too! Whoops. Maybe that's why the wassail didn't taste like apple.

4. Erich asked me to help out at the cafe and make his Uncle Bob's rolls recipe. It called for eggs, and between Dana, Adolfo and I, we were trying to decide who had the best egg cracking abilities, so I just went for it. Of course, I failed miserably and just couldn't get the egg to crack. That's when I remembered Erich saying he wanted me to prepare the deviled eggs after I finished with the rolls. The egg was hard boiled. Oh dear ...


This week's holiday agenda:
- Thursday night Thanksgiving hosted by the last American family that attends our school.
- Friday holiday gathering at our place.
- Saturday's Cup of Joe Thanksgiving potluck for foreigners.
Hence, the Thanksgiving Sandwich.

For actual Thanksgiving day, the food was SOOO delicious. I have never eaten so much variety at a Thanksgiving meal in my life. I think I was just really craving something not Chinese, and something more complicated than cheese. Also, everything was actually home cooked. I made wassail and it was an absolute hit. Although some were disappointed that it wasn't alcoholic, the whole 4 L pot was gone. Yum yum yum! The taste of the holidays!

Lara and I and the Thanksgiving feast.
I am also modeling my new cell phone pouch that I knitted so I don't lose my keys anymore.

This is a candid shot of our Head of School holding the baby of one of our Mandarin teachers,
and Kates reaction at the adorable sight.

FOOOOOOODDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Friday Lara and I hosted a small get together at our place to decorate for the holidays. We had a gingerbread house (our house now smells of gingerbread), sugar cookie decorating, snowflake cutting, Christmas music and movies, more autumn spice drinks and an awesome game of catch phrase. We had our American friends, some Chileans, Italians, and our token Canadian. We were surprised how much our non American friends were very confused by the party. They had never made a gingerbread house, didn't understand why it would be fun to decorate cookies, and thought it was silly that we always wait till after Thanksgiving to start playing the Christmas music. Despite the confusion, Lara and I really enjoyed getting into the winter holiday mood.

The food decorating table.

Dana and Line knitting while watching "A White Christmas"

I was hoping to eat Javier's cookie.

Catch Phrase

The girls decorating ...and the men standing on the outskirts,
not wanting to get too close to the frosting for inexplicable reasons.

Cookies :)

Last, since the Shortes family home wasn't big enough to host the entire AIAN community for Thanksgiving day, Cup of Joe hosted ANOTHER Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday for all the foreigners to come, enjoy, and share in our traditions. This is when I actually got to participate by making rolls for Erich and making deviled eggs. I did peace out for the bean casserole though, I thought I would push my luck with that one. After the preparations we had a flag football game. And then after dinner we ended the party with two games of charades ... I had to act out bread (category: things in Cup of Joe), and Monsters Inc. (category: internationally known movie titles). The last tie breaker clue was creme brulee, and I was the one who knew what they were trying to act out, but I didn't remember the name of the dish! So I whispered to Dana and she ended up winning the game for us! We also playing the hand tap game around the table, and some camp songs around the fire. The call/response song about the bear wearing tennis shoes was quite popular.

Jett was also really into the football game as you can tell. And that last video is my Saturday/Thanksgiving Day interception!! Almost the most exciting play that I made in the game. I also almost scored a long distance throw touch down, but I caught the ball literally inches short of the end zone.

Diego (Grade 3) running with the ball. Itzuki (Grade 9) blocks Kate (MS science teacher)