A day in the land of plenty

Before I left Sweden for Seattle I made a mental to-do list with events and phenomena I hoped to experience while in the US. One of the posts read "A proper American Thanksgiving dinner", which was resolutely ticked off yesterday. Honestly, I didn't expect that to happen until next year but ended up being invited to no less than three different dinners. I wish I could have made two copies of myself and attended all three of them, but have unfortunately yet to master the proper cloning skills.

The evening was spent at Ollie and Nancy's house, where their son Max and his girlfriend Sarah hosted a potluck for a party of twelve, while the parents were out of town. It was a terrific event with lots of eating, drinking, chatting, laughing, and piano playing. The crowd was super friendly and trying all the dishes that were completely new to me was thrilling and fun. To my surprise, traditional Thanksgiving food is really vegetarian friendly and I was more than stuffed when I eventually left.

Sadly, the few pictures I took were of very low quality but I'll show a few of them anyway, beginning with an overview of the menu (all dishes not shown). I contributed with the salad in the wooden bowl; baby spinach and other mixed lettuces, thinly sliced pear, finely chopped shallots, chèvre, dried cranberries, walnuts, and vinaigrette. The various pots, pans, and bowls contained chipotle yams, mashed potatoes, butternut squash mac and cheese, green bean casserole, corn casserole, corn bread, leeks, brussel sprouts, Southern-style collards, turkey, paté, bread, three kinds of stuffing (two with meat, one vegetarian), two kinds of gravy (vegetarian and non-vegetarian), and two kinds of cranberry sauce.

My plate was... full. I had to try everything, didn't I? My favorite was without a doubt the corn casserole in combination with cranberry sauce. The sauce resembled Swedish lingonberry jam, but flavored with orange and seasonal spices. Yummy!

The dessert table was no less packed, displaying two kinds of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, another pie (zucchini?), sweet rolls, my apple pie with custard (both of which turned out great, at least according to me), and some completely delicious chewy pecan brownies.

My warmest thanks to the hosts of this fine evening! Next year I don't have to wonder where I'll be because Scott has already made me promise that I'll spend that Thanksgiving with him and Shani. I already look forward to it!