B and I celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday in a very elaborate and complex production: we made ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, cranberry sauce, foccacia, brownies, and stuffing. We went to the international grocery store (where they stock exotic products like C&H sugar and Barilla pasta), the local Walmart (which despite being Walmart carries mostly local Chinese products) and the local Chinese grocery store. Unfortunately none of these places had a cookie sheet or other baking equipment (for the brownies and foccacia), as Chinese people don't bake (we ended up using a bamboo cutting board as B remembered pizza is sometimes cooked on wooden slabs). Also, none of these places had any measuring cups/spoons, because Chinese cooking does not use them. According to the Chinese, cooking is an art not a science and therefore recipes will only say to add as much as "is suitable". Being scientific-minded Westerners, we were very worried, but luckily a nearby store selling only imported products from Japan had a very tiny measuring cup in stock (it only measures up to 3/4 of a cup: I suppose the Japanese like small portions!)
Then we took all of our purchases home and spent about 6 hours cooking. Neither of us had ever made a Thanksgiving dinner before, and it was unexpectedly complicated (yet we didn't even have a turkey!). I am now in awe of all of you who make Thanksgiving dinners all the time. We finished 2 hours past when we had expected, but the food all turned out very well and was consumed with relish (we had a friend of ours from the US over as well), although of course there are lots of leftovers. I was glad that we celebrated the holiday appropriately: even though it was a lot of trouble, I had a lot of fun.
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