How to Thanksgiving

Lessons Learned from 20 years of Thanksgivings Abroad

How to Have Thanksgiving Abroad, In Dark Times or Light

This is my 20^th (give or take?) Thanksgiving abroad. A lot has happened since 2004, a lot of it not very worth giving thanks for. And yet, we persevere. It is the perfect holiday. Almost every American celebrates Thanksgiving; it requires no god and no gifts. It doesn’t hurt anyone to think hard about the meal you’re going to create, gather your friends and eat it together. That can be enough.

No matter where you are in the world, if you can find one other American and a deli counter turkey breast, you can have Thanksgiving.

I’ve hosted or co-hosted Thanksgiving in five countries at varying stages of development. I, myself, have been at various stages of development as well. One year in Tbilisi, I was one of two middle-aged women who’d never cooked Thanksgiving before in charge of a meal for about 15. We forgot things, like to take the bag of giblets out of the turkey’s cavity before we cooked it, and that we would need the pan drippings that we threw down the sink to make the gravy. The bloody marys that everyone started drinking at 11:00 contributed both to our failure, and the failure of the other guests to notice our failure. It didn’t matter. We were all thankful for each other, and our failures.

This post originally appeared on Carpetblog in perhaps 2006, or 2007. I’ve added details from subsequent posts. Thanksgiving’s gotten easier since then, perhaps because I’ve learned to cook, gotten older or moved somewhere where I didn’t have to gut my own turkey.

Learn from my errors.

Act I:    Assemble guest list

With multiple characters who haven’t the means or legal right to go home hanging around, it can be hard to decide whom to invite. Typically, new kids receive invitations based on their ability to amuse and/or their inability to be offended by coarse, but beloved, old timers. Perhaps out of a sense of generosity brought about by the season or, more likely, boredom with the cast of usual suspects, you should open the event up to anyone who can fog a mirror. A rogue element or two is always welcome. This approach may result in a guest list of 37 people, some of whom you have met before. It’s Thanksgiving and you should share.

The best guests are Thanksgiving virgins. They are highly persuadable. Some dish comes out wrong? “Oh, didn’t you know? It’s supposed to be that way.” Happy to be included, they’ll believe anything. Also, you can tell them it’s Thanksgiving tradition to bring the hostess expensive gifts.

Act II:   Hoard traditional ingredients

If most expats are British oil workers, the foreigners’ supermarkets will cater to their refined British palates. In other words, if you need a can of beans for your toast or some mash for your bangers, you’re in luck, but if you want Coolwhip or a can of Libby’s pumpkin pie mix, you’d better start importing from the US six months in advance, thinking creatively or saving your kopeks. Someone might offer you a dented can of cranberries from the embassy commissary in March. If the peeling label shows its jellied contents, complete with the can marks, grab it before someone else does. It’s America in a can!

You might get able to get a Butterball from the commissary but don’t count on it. Why though? Most countries have turkeys. Go look for one. [See Act IV]

Act III: Identify local alternatives to traditional dishes

Maybe you didn’t always live in France where finding the right ingredients was as simple as ordering the turkey from the boucherie in October and buying cranberries at Monoprix. Cranberries can be very hard to find outside the US, but pomegranates might be just as good (you thought that once, but you were wrong). No sweet potatoes, either, but your cleaning lady's cabbage and beet salads could be a suitable replacement (you were wrong about that too). A local-style plate of palate-cleansing herbs – miniature scallions, basil, parsley and fennel shoots – is a great idea. And what could be more Thanksgiving-y than Caspian beluga poached by the government-owned fish processing operation and delivered by your gold-toothed driver in a plastic bucket? Create your own cocktails from abundant local products such as pomegranate juice, cheap champagne and vodka (that’s called a Narimanov). If you’re in a dry or wine-poor country, improvise. A friend and I once drove from Istanbul to Bulgaria to find wine in bulk (it was fun, but we failed).

Don’t skimp on the booze. No one will notice shortcomings in the kitchen if the liquor flows freely. This principle applies equally in France as the Caucasus.

Act IV: Acquire the Turkey

Some countries are lousy with wiry hens and toms that travel in large herds and occasionally block traffic. A local friend who has enjoyed a real Thanksgiving dinner in the US might helpfully suggest that you could buy a live country turkey -- which everyone knows are measurably better than their city-raised cousins -- and transport it back to the capital the trunk of your white Volga sedan. Once home, you could just keep it on your fourth-floor balcony until Thanksgiving, she suggests helpfully.

You thank her for her problem-solving ability but point out that where to keep the live turkey is actually not the biggest logistical obstacle associated with her otherwise very good idea.

Take a more traditional approach: enlist the services of your resourceful gold—toothed driver and go to the bazaar. It helps a lot if your driver can tell funny jokes about Russians (this was true back in 2005, even).

The bazaar offers all kinds of meat products, hygienically displayed on tarps, rusting hooks or tree stumps. Tripe, boiled sheep heads, trotters, tongue, even the forbidden meat-- it's all there. You have to a be little bit careful, though. The floor is slippery with gut slime and you have to dodge beef shrapnel from "butchers" hacking away at carcasses with hatchets.

Have a look at the pen of live turkeys. The leggy birds spend their lives running free and wild, pecking at rocks, grass and sheep poops, but you have questions. Where are their breasts? Meaty legs? Who is going to snuff their life force out for you?

Fortunately, a plump woman nearby with a green floral headscarf peddles slightly larger birds that are conveniently already dead. “Killed just two hours ago! Smell!” Breathe in the bouquet of the neck cavity she jams in your face.

Because you usually learn from your mistakes, you verify in advance that green head-scarfed lady’s services include cleaning out the turkey’s guts. Otherwise, you’ll be standing over the sink, elbow deep in viscera again, pulling out handfuls of undigested turkey chow and noting that the diameter of a turkey’s esophagus is a lot bigger than you would have thought, had you ever thought about that before.

Final Act: Be Thankful

You should be thankful. Usually, this space is where I listed those things. I don’t know where I was when I wrote, “I am thankful that I was mistaken for a prostitute only once this week. I am thankful that karaoke is not that popular here,” but I can guess. With war on the continent and rising fascism all around, I feel a bit like I am scraping the thankfulness barrel this year. I am thankful I have 12 people coming over for dinner instead of no one.  The sun will probably be out, and we can go for a walk along the sea. That will do.