A Real Thanksgiving Feast!

Happy December from Japan! Although the weather still feels more like fall than winter. Not that I'm complaining. Far from it, I would rather get rain every other day than snow. I'm told we won't see snow in Tokyo until February. But, it has been getting pretty chilly! I don't know if its because the air here is more humid, but I feel like I get colder faster in Japan than back in Colorado.

Midterms are finally over! And there are only three more weeks until winter break! Yesterday, a group of us got together to celebrate Thanksgiving. I know, I know- its a little late! But, we didn't want to try and celebrate Thanksgiving in the middle of everyone's tests. Plus, this weekend we have a three day weekend. Happy Saint Xavier's Day! This is what happens when you go to a Catholic college- you get odd holidays off. I don't think another school in Tokyo has the day off. But its a good thing that we do! That way we can all work off our food comas.

  We've been preparing for our 'Thanksgiving' feast for a few weeks now, and yesterday it all came together. I was in charge of the Turkey and stuffing. A bit of a task when you are cooking for eleven people. But, it was fun! One of the girls' dorms had an industrial sized kitchen that we were able to rent out. It was the only way this whole plan was able to come together. The kitchen itself was kind of unorganized, but it suited college kids' needs pretty well. The big problem we ran into was that there was no hot water in the kitchen. Strange, right?

 

Luckily, we found this giant tea kettle. Seriously, I could have probably fit my head inside it. So, we kept it filled with water and kept it on the stove top. It worked out really well! I kind of felt like I was camping again. It was necessary that we had all that hot water, there were a lot of dishes that needed to be cleaned. My fingers were all wrinkled by the end of the night from all the dishes I did! 

We got to the kitchen at about 11:30 am, and I'm glad we got there that early! The kitchen is a bit different from a standard American one, and it took us some time to figure out how to work things. For example the gas oven doesn't have temperatures, you just have to adjust the size of the flames. We tested out the oven with bread first. In under two minutes, it was burned to black charcoal. It really made me nervous to put the turkeys in the oven. That's right, turkeys. As in, two. There were a lot of boys at this Thanksgiving. 

So, with the finicky ovens it took a bit long than we anticipated to get everything ready to go. But eventually we did! And dinner was ready by about 5 pm. But, we didn't let the boys dig in right away, much to their disappointment. The girls had to get pictures of the table first. 

 

All of the food came out really well! Even the turkeys! One of the girls gave me a wonderful compliment by saying it was the best turkey she had ever eaten! I think all of the butter I basted the turkey in really helped. 

 

We had lots of sides too! Green beans, stuffing, potato salad, regular salad, mashed potatoes. And, all improvised with ingredients found in Japan!

 

And, to top it all off: one of the girls made white chocolate/persimmon bread pudding. It was delicious!  

 

We ended up leaving at about 8 pm; it was a rather long day! But, it was also really fun! I don't know if we will be doing anything for Christmas, but if we do I'll be sure to blog about it!