So, we did it!
Friday, Nicole and I met at 12 and spent the next 3 and a half hours shopping. We visited a total of around 10 stores and ended up spending 119 Euros of our 120 Euro budget. My mother taught me well. Of course, we ended up carrying everything we bought all around Munich too. Thus I had 3 turkeys in my backpack for most of the afternoon. Here's the full list:
4 turkeys
4 pumpkins
4 cans of evaporated milk
1 bag of sugar
2 bags of flour
10 "cubes" of butter (the equivalent of 20 sticks we found out later... don't ever mistakenly think Thanksgiving is healthy...)
6 boxes of potatoes
4 liters of milk
5 baguettes
4 jars of cranberries
2 cans of whipped cream
1 can of raisins
2 bags of walnuts
1 bag of green apples
1 bag of onions
2 clusters of celery
1 packet of chicken bouillon
6 packets of gravy powder
120 paper plates
120 plastic forks
Then we dropped it all off at Nicole's place and I went up to school to meet with Erika, Dr. Conrad and Jack. Jack was a student here last year from U of IL, and has been working on my behalf at Dr. Conrad's request to try to smooth things out for me. Well, he was in Munich for a conference, we we had a "group meeting" where I got some good news about classes and credits. They're willing to "bend the rules" for me on this side if it will give me credit on the other side. The question will be how naive UIUC is about it...
The other fun part is, I get to decide which grades I want to send back... that means, after the final, I have to go pick up my "Schein" (certificate?) that has the class and my grade on it, basically, the proof that I took the class. Well, there's no official transcript until Dr. Conrad puts it together. That means, I can give Dr. Conrad only the "Schein"s that I want to get credit for. So if I end up with a pretty bad grade in, way, Linear Algebra, I just don't pass that one along. :)
Saturday was St. Nicholas' Day. There was a little festival in the "village" I live in. They had music and free gifts for kids and were giving away cups of Glühwein (at 10 am...) and forms of lebkuchen. I spent most of Saturday studying.
Sunday I met Nicole at 10 am and the day began.
Pumpkin pie completely from scratch means washing, slicing, baking, scooping and mashing pumpkin into puree before making the filling. We started with that and the pie crust. Pie crust was especially fun because we were a little short on kitchen materials... as in, no whisk or masher for mashing the butter into the flour for the crust. Fingers, luckily, work just as well. The recipe had called for one pumpkin per pie. We'd been planning on 4 pies, and thus had 4 pumpkins. By the time the 4th pie was finished, however, we were only halfway through the pie mixture... but luckily had plenty of butter and flour so we ended up making 8 pies and enjoyed one for ourselves at the end.
Turkey... so we had four semi-frozen turkeys sitting in the sink and I was in charge of removing the "bags" from inside. Right... how the heck do you get inside a turkey? After a good 20 minutes of fumbling around with the poor bird, Amelia finally came over to help me. She was equally confused. Eventually we figured out... we were reaching around in the wrong end. Ah... we found and removed the bags and wondered why the heck people would bother to put that stuff back in after they took it out in the first place. How about attaching it on the outside? We prepared the oven to bake. Luckily we were able to borrow an oven in the building next door, so we could have all four turkeys going at once. Nicole and I stuffed them with "fake stuffing" (just onions, celery and carrots), the idea being that they still soaked up the flavor of stuffing, but didn't take as long. Problem number 2 with limited materials. We had no string. The whole "where the heck are the bags?" had resulted in a little bit of abuse to the poor turkeys so if we wanted the turkeys legs to stay together such that the stuffing did not spill out everywhere, it was indeed necessary to tie the legs together. Well, turns out cutting a string of fat from the turkey works very well as string. It holds and it ties.
We had stuffing going on the stove. We started cranberries as well. The turkeys finished. Nicole, who'd watched a 15 minute YouTube video on carving turkeys became the expert and carved with Ashley's help. The stuffing finished. The last pies were in the oven. The cranberries finished. The kitchen was a mess. It was 8 pm... so then we cleaned. And by 9 pm, 11 long hours after we'd started, we were finished. Nicole and I split up the food. I took half of it home in my backpack, side bag and a big plastic bag. On the subway I was informed by a middle-aged man that he thought I was running away from home. I explained that I was not.
Monday, both of us dragged all the food to the church kitchen... and both were very glad when we finally got there. Hans was there to help. We started mashed potatoes and gravy on the stove (just add milk/water), cut the pies, warmed the meat and stuffing, thinned the cranberries to use as a glaze for the turkey. The British guys showed up as did Amelia and Ben (New Zealand), and then we loaded up 120 plates of food. We had the perfect amount. And we got a plate too! And it was good!!! It tasted like it was supposed to! All of it! We were extremely impressed (and a little shocked...) Cleanup of that kitchen afterwards was just as fun, but worth it based on the comments we got. One person mentioned that they had been expecting hotdogs from the Americans. Another said they'd always heard about "Thanksgiving dinner" and now knew what it was. Another informed us that the "pumpkin cake" had been very good. Another asked if we could please explain what the heck was in this (pointing to stuffing). And finally, the comment that it'd been the best meal yet. Which, for Nicole and I, made the combined 3.5 hours Friday, 11 hours Sunday and 2 hours Monday worth it. :)
No, I'm not doing that again, btw...
Pictures:
Me starting on the pumpkins
Nicole and Amelia at the stove
Nicole and I stuffing the turkeys
Nicole and I looking really surprised that the turkey actually looks like a cooked turkey!
The plates, ready to go out...
No comments:
Post a Comment