There’s one guarantee to life: it’ll be choked full of unexpected moments. Learn to embrace them and you will enjoy life. Fight them and life will become a giant frustration.
Wow. What a thanksgiving! It was packed with hilarious moments when everything went wrong and beautiful recoveries where things worked out perfectly!
Since I am the only American for 500 miles, we thought we’d better host this year if we wanted to get the pumpkin pie right! I had invited our team of 6 adults and 4 children over. At first I struggled with the thought of us having a feast as our country is on the brink of a famine due to poor rains this year. How could we eat nice (relatively) expensive food while some people are just struggling to fill their children’s tummies before bedtime? We decided to settle for a simple meal – special – but simple and emphasize the ‘thanksgiving’ part of it instead of how many calories we could consume!
The menu: Baked Cajun Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing, Gravy, and Ginger Carrots. For dessert, Pumpkin pie with the closest we could get to whipped cream (it was more like whipped milk!). I also attempted Hibiscus Sorbet for the kids, which was a big hit (with sprinkles of course!).
We also planned to have a thanksgiving tree (where you cut out leaves from colored paper, write things you’re thankful for on them, and tape them to a paper “tree”.
Lili and I started preparing a few days in advance. We pureed the pumpkin, made breadcrumbs for the stuffing, planned out the meal and decorations and I was left with one big question….how could we make a substitute cranberry sauce? There’s not a cranberry in the country, so it would have to be something else. A friend of mine made red hibiscus jam last year. It’s got quite a kick to it and so I thought I would give it a go. I attempted 3 times – and they all flopped! Laugh. I now know that she added an apple for the gelatin – but without the apple it was more like syrup!
So, from the syrup I made a red hibiscus drink called “Beesap” which is popular all over west Africa. I added fresh mint to give it a bit of refreshing taste. Because I had so much of it, I thought there was NO WAY we’d ever use it all! Well, we did! Keep reading!
For lunch we let Yan have his first taste of pumpkin, in honor of Thanksgiving which he thoroughly enjoyed!
About 4pm I finally got through to my family in the States and had a great chat with them. About 5pm I started the last minute cooking, as everyone was due to arrive about 6pm.
I lit the two burners on my stove and everything was cooking nicely until the gas ran out. AHHH! Ben went to his toolbox to try and change the bottle over for a full one (thankfully we had one!), and realized his wrench wasn’t there. Meanwhile the clock is ticking away and I wondering how ever this meal will be ready on time. Somehow my SuperBen managed to change it over with his bare hands (leather hands!) and we were back in business until….
At 5:45pm I got a call that several local people were coming to our meal. I rushed to add more plates to the table thinking “these people don’t eat off of plates – they eat off of platters and with their hands”. Oh well!
Just then two ladies turned up who I had never met before. They were from the beggar cast. These people go around singing blessings on you to the extent you give them money. If you don’t give anything, they sing curses! J Great. Potatoes are on. Gravy needs stirring, and I’ve got two ladies who want money for their songs. Just then more people turned up unexpectedly and without sharing all the details, we busted out most of our dishes and made the food stretch and had a true thanksgiving feast with a FULL table, instead of the simple 10 we had counted on! It was great. People ate with forks, spoons and hands! Every last drip of “beesap” was drunk, every last piece of chicken eaten and the pumpkin pie devoured! We were a bit wacked at the end of the day, but it surely was a thanksgiving to remember!
