Thanksgiving in Denmark

One of the most difficult parts about being abroad was missing Thanksgiving with my family at home, especially when I knew that all my friends were home and seeing my parents when I'm not around. To make up for not being at OUR respective Thanksgiving dinners, my friends and I decided to cook a full meal for my visiting family. They let us use their kitchen all day and by the time the kids and the two parents came home the turkey was in the oven, the house smelled amazing, and we had successfully prepared about 8 different dishes (a combo of the classic meals served at home and at Jennifer's house). It was the best Thanksgiving away from home I could have asked for! Read on for the tales of a full day of cooking (and cleaning) and tons of eating.

An assortment of food that we started with. My visting mom, Camilla, went to a special store to order (yes, you have to special order) the turkey and to pick up cranberries, canned pumpkin, and marshmallows. Jennifer and I took care of the rest. Our menu consisted of: turkey, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, spinach casserole, homemade cranberry sauce (they don't have our favorite jellied cranberry sauce there), homemade stuffing (no Stoffer's Stovetop either), corn bread, and pumpkin pie. 

It's important to keep in mind that I have never in my life cooked a turkey. Ever. (Or any of the other dishes we ended up making for that matter.) But that turkey and I were best friends by the end of the night. Jennifer decided she would work on some of the other dishes while I cleaned and prepared the turkey for 4 hours of cooking. Also note the size of the turkey - my visiting family thought it was HUGE. If only they could see what we have at home...

Canned pumpkin!!! Legitimately one of the most exciting parts of the meal was being able to make this dessert. When my parents came to Europe they brought me some so I could make pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but unfortunately one of the airports confiscated it. Luckily my visiting mom found some more at a store in Denmark!

Thank god for eHow.com. 

Our friend Ilana came over for a bit to help us cook. Though she looks disgusted at what would later become the stuffing, it actually ended up tasting delicious. 

After stuffing the turkey with peppers, onions, and TONS of butter and letting it sit in water with veggies we injected it with some Cajun butter (aka butter with some random spices that I mixed with it). At home we just pop the turkey in the bag and let it cook away, but Jennifer's family stuffs it and injects it, so we went with her recipe. 

The finished stuffing.

Cranberry Sauce. I don't like the jellied kind that we always have out our Thanksgiving, but this was delicious, so I was very pleased with how it turned out. Liv (one of my visiting sisters) helped me make this and we were pretty skeptical because the cranberries weren't getting that soft. Luckily it turned out just fine.

A much deserved beer after a long day of cooking. I don't think beer has ever tasted so good. 

My visiting dad - Dag - kindly carved the turkey for us (that was a bit too much for us to do). 

Our hyggeligt dinner table set for 7 - Dag, Camilla, Liv, Signe, me, Jennifer, and Kelsie.

The table was packed with food. There was almost not enough room for all of the dishes, but we made it work. My visiting family had never tried a lot of the food on the table - Camilla and Dag seemed to really enjoy everything, while Liv and Signe were not as enthused about some of the dishes (I was the exact same at their age though). All in all, a great success! 

Camilla and I before sitting down for dinner. This made it into the DIS holiday newsletter (yay we're famous)! 

Our scrumptious pumpkin pie. We made the crust from scratch (and succeeded on our second attempt) and Jennifer made some maple whipped cream to put on top. I usually don't really like pumpkin pie, but this was great. 

Dinner itself was also amazing. Great conversation, great company, and great food made for the perfect night. All of us drank a lot of wine, which only made our conversations more enjoyable :) I'm so happy Jennifer, Kelsie, and I were able to share our traditions with my visiting family - they even said they might incorporate some of the dishes into their Christmas dinner this year! Ultimate win.