Friendsgiving 2014

Another year. Another Friendsgiving ...

Friendsgiving Part One with American friends @ Buitengeluk

photo by Ricardo Palomar

 photo by Will Perry

Thanksgiving tree

photo by Ricardo Palomar

Friendsgiving Part Two with South African friends @ Valley Lodge

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, the New York Times published an article featuring a list of recipes which they felt represented every state in the US. I looked at our traditional Thanksgiving menu and found that with very little massaging, it would be easy to incorporate a sense of place into this year's Friendsgiving menu.

tables set with Maasai shukas and shweshwe

We found that every one of our favorite recipes were actually attributable to every state that Vince and I have lived in and even the ones where we regularly vacationed and even sometimes spent Thanksgiving. In fact about all we had to do to our traditional menu was to add cheddar cheese to our Thanksgiving mashed potatoes to represent Vermont.

If we were back in the US, we would have used real Vermont cheddar but we're not ... so our cheddar came from the Karoo. And our wines would probably have included at least one California wine from our cellar, but our wine is back in the US and we are in SA ... so we served exclusively Cape wines.

roasted, fried and braaied

Of course we had all-American Turkey, Dressing and Giblet Gravy. We had three turkeys actually. One roasted, one fried, and one Vince cooked on the braai. And we made fresh pumpkin pie completely from scratch.

write something you are thankful for ...

... and hang it on the Friendsgiving tree

make a wish

blurry action shot of pinky-pulling the wishbone

In South Africa, they do this with an ostrich wishbone! Using their pinkies!

a toast

Lou & Serge have a new BFF

post-it timeline

We always forget to serve something. Even with Vince's elaborate post-it reminder timeline. This year it was whipping the cream for the pumpkin pie. Nobody noticed.

after 16 guests and 3 turkeys ...

Thankful it didn't rain! (The weather report called for thunderstorms all day.) Thankful we didn't have a load shedding power outage. (It's that time of year.) Thankful for friends on Thanksgiving! (It makes being without family on Thanksgiving palatable.)

Thankful for leftovers for turkey soup.

Our Thanksgiving tree is full!

Just so very thankful!