An American Thanksgiving in Scotland

Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November is a very important holiday in American culture. It marks the first good harvest that the pilgrims had in the 1600's. The pilgrims when they came to the new world had no idea how to grow food in the rock soil of the North East of the United States, just south of the city of Boston. The pilgrims for a couple of seasons tryed and failed to grow their own food. The Native Americans of the area watched as the strange people with powerful weapons failed to feed eachother and die of diease and lack of food. Sooner rather then later the Natives took pitty of the Europeans and taught them how to grow their own food and with alot of help the pilgrims were able to grow a full harvest. All the Natives wanted in return was for the Pilgrims to kill off the other tribe in the area they were at war with. The Pilgrims were happy to help their new friends and with their heavy firepower for the day they distroyed the opposing tribe. To celebrate their victory, friendship and the Pilgrims first good harvest they had a massive party that lasted four days which included games, trade and eating a large amount of food. The Natives brought most of the food.
To celebrate now a days we have a large dinner with family and friends where you eat untill your stomach is so packed full of food that moving/ bending in and direction causes pain. Also watch the Macy's parade, that is a very large parade that goes through New York City, watch American football, watch Charlie Brown TV special and go around the table and say what you are thankful for.
Being an American studying in Scotland during the holiday season home sickness is a real threat and to keep up with tradition I decided to host my own Thanksgiving dinner and share it with other international students studying at my University.
I wanted to make everything from scratch and on the menu was mashed white potato, mashed sweet potato, sweet potato rolls, celery and onion stuffing, apple stuffed beer soaked nine pound turkey, cranberry sauce home made and bottled, gravy, bagetts, roasted potato's and onions [dessert] apple pie, pumpkin pie and pumpkin icecream,, along with home brewed hard apple cider. I started baking the day before makingh the potato dishs and pies then Thursday between classes I cooked the rest including the stuffing that was rather difficult to make due to me never have made it before and the pure lack of the herb sage and pultry seasoning in the city of Edinburgh. Just to get the cranberries I had to go to lithlogow about three stops on the national scot-rail train.
I was entertaining eight students and due to their classes the dinner could not start untill six pm but that just gave me time to finish cooking and watch old 007 movies because I couldnt figture out how to watch the Macys parade online. There was; two Candians, two Chinese, one Scot, one English, one Singaporian and one Bulgarian for dinner. The Candians both had celebrated their Thanksgivings by roasting chickens, but you just cant replace a turkey with a chicken.
The dinner went off with out a hitch although there was many conservative eaters that might have not fully understood the the holiday of the directions I handed out when inviting them of fasting that day untill the dinner. After the main course we lost one of the Candians and the English citizen who left early. But soon after they left, we attemped to open the large bottle of the home brewed apple cider after we had finished the smaller bottles. I say attemped because we all but twisted the bottle top a couple of millimeters before the cap and the contence exploided out and covered my geusts in hard apple cidar. After the shock went away, it was pretty funny.
After a little break, I had the privelage of introduced many of my fellow students to the wonders of pumpkin pie and pumpkin ice cream that was a top rated dish among them as we watched the movie Salt and had a lovly conversation about the hieght of actors and Russian spys.

Over all it was a great night and a good learn oppertunity on how to make some of these dishes I had never made before and I beleive my geusts had a good time other then being soaked in hard apple cidar.

The clear bottle is the exploiding one! There was more food I just hadn't brought it in the room yet.

Thats right I had a pumpkin center peice.