This Brit’s first Thanksgiving

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Life

Thanksgiving

For the first time, this Brit celebrated Thanksgiving last week. Well, I’m not sure celebrate is accurate. Thanksgiving dinner was had. Followed by much merriment. It was more just about the food. Isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about?

Since as long as I can remember, I’ve really enjoyed having people over and cooking for them. Back in England I tried to do it as much as possible with my friends there. I’m proud to say I had an annual barbecue tradition where totally obscene amounts of food was cooked and consumed. And now I’m lucky enough to have a guy who enjoys doing this as much as me.

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll see the ridiculous number of food photos. Food is a big part of our life. So we’ll take any excuse to cook up a huge meal for some friends.

Enter Thanksgiving

Prep began the day before Thanksgiving with pumpkin pie (using Alton Brown’s pumpkin pie recipe) and dry brining/marinading the lamb. Because you see in Bahrain there is no turkey. No wait, that’s a lie. There is turkey right now, which is frozen and HUGE. Too huge for our oven. Pork could have been an option but being a Muslim country, pork is incredibly expensive. (it is available to non-muslims in supermarkets) So – lamb.

Slow roasted legs of lamb

Despite the butcher absolutely massacring the legs of lamb, with some ingenuity and tight wrapping, it all worked out brilliantly.

Thanksgiving day started off sedately with the prep stages, turning into an absolute whirlwind of cooking. We both loved every second of it. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of – both of us work insanely well together in the kitchen. I hate the brag, but I’m gonna – it’s the one thing people comment most about us too. Makes this girl proud.

Carving

The man carving up the lamb. Because being a vegetarian, he prides himself in being able to cook meat.

Anyway, back to Thanksgiving food. There was a lot. Along with pumpkin pie and lamb we made mashed potatoes, dropped scones, green beans, glorious stuffing, gravy and our friends brought over some fantastic nut roast.

Dropped scones & stuffing

Dropped scones in place of any sort of dinner roll. And some glorious stuffing.

After food things descended into a Chromecast party – I shit you not, this wasn’t planned, but it happened. And it was brilliant. Where else can you watch music videos ranging from random dub step remixes of your favourite songs to some third wave ska.

10 Comments

  1. That looks amazing, but I’m curious, why did you celebrate an American holiday?

    By the by, please stop by anytime and cook. Heheheh. xxoo

    • So my BF is basically American – born in the UK, but grew up in the States. He now works for an American company based in Bahrain. And my company graciously let me sync my public holidays with his. *phew*

      Because of him we “celebrated” Thanksgiving. I use the quotation marks because we just used the day as an excuse to cook, eat and drink!

      Will gladly stop by and cook, just let me know when 😉

  2. Goodness me this looks delicious!! And now, I’m hungry with I’m-not-sure-what waiting for me at home for dinner but I sure as heck know it’s not the feast captured beautifully above! :'(

    P.S. Please tell me I am not seeing things and it is actually snowing in your part of the blogging world which IS SO COOL!

    • Thank you, Mo! It really was a feast. So much food. But none of it was wasted 😉

      And yes, that is snow! WordPress puts on some magic, even for self hosted blogs. It throws me every year!

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