Talkin' Turkey

Since we won't make it home for Thanksgiving, Edgar and I are teaming up with Charlie's family and some of her Swedish friends (who knew Thanksgiving could be so international!) for a feast like none other...well, except for maybe my mom's. I can't promise dressing as flavorful or turkey quite as moist as my mom's, but I'm certainly going to try. Since Edgar and Shawn have to work on Thursday, we will be celebrating on Saturday. Today I headed to the grocery store for the big shopping trip. This is my experience of shopping for a holiday not celebrated in England...

I was super organized with a printed list, created in Excel, and categorized by supermarket sections. I was worried about not being able to find a few items, namely the cornbread and biscuits for the dressing. I had cornmeal imported a few months ago via a friend and Gatwick airport. Biscuits...this one is a little tricky since, over here, biscuits are cookies. Sure enough, no biscuits to be found. They just don't eat them here. I guess the closest thing may be a scone, but I didn't want to chance an experiment on my first big Thanksgiving dinner. So after a panicked flip through my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook, I found a recipe. Guess they'll be homemade! So far, so good.

Next challenge...molasses for the baked beans. Over here, they eat baked beans all the time. They are a staple for the "Traditional English Breakfast". But these aren't baked beans as we think of them, they are just good ole pork and beans. Heinz just changes the label to say "Baked Beans" instead of "Pork & Beans". In fact, the pork & bean selection is as big as the soup selection, no joke! A nice worker in the frozen food section helped me locate the frozen broccoli for the broccoli-rice casserole (another story) and I told him he would make me really happy if he could find some molasses for me. He said, "Oh yes, we don't have molasses here, we haven't had molasses since 1953, when we couldn't get the "black treacle"". I don't know why they couldn't get black treacle in 1953, since it is made in the UK. Nonetheless, he assured me that black treacle is very similar to molasses (apparently, molasses is just a fancy name for black treacle), and he gave me a personal escort to its location...what a guy! I told him if the baked beans don't turn out, I will look for him next time I am in the store.

Last obstacle is Cheese Whiz for the broccoli-rice casserole. I'm not a big fan of Cheese Whiz, but it tastes really yummy in this casserole. Over here, you are hard pressed to find cheese that isn't the real thing. They take their cheese very seriously and to produce something not made from some animal's milk and call it cheese would just be blasphemy. I am substituting Emmental cheese instead, so we'll see how it turns out.

In addition to these dishes, we are having all the traditional trimmings-cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. I am getting a bit nervous, but I figure after 30 years of watching, it's time to do some doing. I'll let you know how it goes!