Thank You Ireland!

The long awaited Thanksgiving blog...Sorry about that...

As it turns out, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Ireland. I know, I know...you are surprised... For the most part, though, nobody here really knows anything about Thanksgiving beyond what they see in movies, so a big part of our Thanksgiving this year has been about introducing the concept to our pool of international friends. Leading up to Thanksgiving Mariah arranged the importation of a variety of thanksgiving foodstuffs that we couldn't find around Dublin. Nobody here has ever heard of pumpkin pie, so that was the big one. (We did later manage to find a shop that is very internationally oriented and had a bit of canned pumpkin - it was only there the one time we went in and bought some, the next time it was all gone - along with some canned cranberries, so next year we may be able to collect everything we need if we start buying things up early.)

Since no one had ever heard of pumpkin pie, Mariah made it her mission to introduce this taste to everyone...well...everyone at her work anyway. She baked up two pumpkin pies which she toted into coworkers and watched a very mixed range of expressions as people experienced the flavors for the first time. For the most part it started with extreme skepticism or expected disgust and ended with enjoyment. Often the enjoyment took a lot of confused bites to get to. "Interesting" was the most common descriptor and a whole piece of pie was in some cases not enough for people to decide whether or not they actually liked it. No plates were left uncleaned, so someone definitely liked it in the end.

Our supplies of pumpkin were limited, so I got stuck with offering up apple pies to my coworkers (I wasn't baking, so these were bakery bought). American enough, I would say, but by no means uncharted territory for people's taste buds. Hopefully next year we can round up enough goods to give my office a taste of the pumpkin ecstasy.

The main event ended up being held on Saturday instead of Thursday. Since it's not an Irish holiday we still had to work on Thursday and we preferred to save our days off for adventures into Europe and we knew no one but us would really know the difference. We also had visitors coming over to join us for the holiday that couldn't make it on Thursday. My sister Holly has been studying for a term of exchange in London, so she came, along with her friend Ellen, over to the little island to enjoy some Turkey and see Dublin in one fell swoop. Good craic.

On the day of the big event we got started relatively early (for a Saturday), had some breakfast, and then headed into town a bit before noon. Thanksgiving was to be held at Bruno's place (of course), so we were to gather up groceries, including the turkey, and then head over there for an afternoon of food preparation. The dinner wasn't to begin until 7:00pm or so, but turkeys take a long time to cook and the prep, I am told, is half of the fun. We were also expecting about seventeen people total, so a lot of food was to be prepared.

We found one shop that would order us a turkey (it seems the Irish only eat turkey for Christmas dinner, so this was harder than it sounds) and we headed there first to pick that up. Here's where the trouble started. It seems the delivery guy forgot to throw the turkeys in his truck, so he was going to have to go all the way back to the meat packing plant to pick them up. The predicted time was round 2:00pm for arriving back at the shop. We were also getting the "crown" of the turkey (which is just the breast portion of the turkey) instead of a whole turkey. The crown wasn't what we were expecting and the delay was a little disconcerting, but...what do you do.

We headed on to the grocery store and picked up the rest of our supplies, a few of which were no where to be found, but we made due. We lugged everything back to Bruno's where Holly and Ellen started cutting up produce while Mariah started putting together side dishes and hors d'oeuvres. I, on the other hand, spent the whole afternoon walking back and forth from the apartment to the shops - walking to the turkey shop only to find out the truck was late, or walking to the grocer to grab this or that which had been forgotten. Multiple trips were made to the turkey shop before the finally said they would just call me when it was actually there. This call came around 3:30pm. When I got there they somehow managed to give me too much turkey and I ended up half way to Bruno's before realizing this and took the excess back.

I arrived back at the apartment with turkey in hand (a 5kg/12lb slab of pure breast meat with no bones or anything) just after 4:00pm with some serious doubts about the achievement of our timeline. The butcher had said this crown should cook faster than a full turkey with no bones or excess, but we only had three hours until dinner was meant to be served and I was still skeptical. The oven was hot, ready and waiting when I arrived, so the turkey went straight in, and we were left to simply wait for people to show up and hope our time would be enough. As it turns out, a meat thermometer is harder to find than crack (real crack, not craic...craic is easy to come by...) in Dublin, so we had to make cuts here and there in the end to discern the turkey's level of cookedness (this is a new word designed exclusively for this blog...share it among your friends...).

People started filtering in at 7:00pm. It was our usual mix of pan-world nationalities: Americans, Portuguese, South Africans, Belgians, Irish, Czech, Polish...you know...the works. Conversations trickled between new and old friends and Holly got to see a bit of what we get to enjoy while living here. The turkey was done (or at least done enough), though a bit late, and we had the full spread laid out by 8:00pm. We ended up having so much food that it took all of the table space to set it out, so people were forced to stand or sit with plate in hand and eat, which didn't seem to end up a problem for anyone. We would have preferred to gather everyone around a table and eat in a more traditional style, but when you're lacking for space you adapt. The food spread was amazing and all credit goes to Mariah for putting this together. We had everything: turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, macaroni and cheese (craft style), salad, corn bread, dinner rolls, zucchini with cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, cranberry sauce (canned style, which I think only Mariah ate), stuffing, garlic bread. Did I say everything?...I meant EVERYTHING!. It was ridiculous. Everyone enjoyed everything. Despite the fact that nothing seems to be easy in Ireland and the build up to the meal was fraught with frustrations, it was a really spectacular end result and everyone really enjoyed themselves. Given the quantity of food I expect that all of our non-American friends got a good taste of what Thanksgiving is really about...food...lots and lots and mounds and piles of food! And to end it all off...pumpkin pie. Mariah saved half of her pumpkin pie supplies for Thanksgiving proper and so lots more folks who had never experienced pumpkin pie had the opportunity to have a go.

As the evening closed the truth came out: the European appetite couldn't handle it. "Eat until you pass out" was established at the beginning of the night as the Thanksgiving credo and not one person lost consciousness. How disappointing... Even with seventeen people we had leftovers galore. We left a good chunk of the leftovers for Bruno and his roommate Joao, quite a few of our guests were berated into taking a plate home, and I think we still took a whole half of the turkey back to our wee refrigerator. We ate turkey at least once a day for a week. I suppose that's how it's supposed to work out, but....jaaayyyysssus! (This expression is very Irish, by the way.) There was much talk early on of going dancing after the dinner and, when things were all said and done, not one foot stepped onto a dance floor. Everyone was too full. I guess I can consider this a consolation prize, given the lack of unconsciousness.

Kudos to all of you folks out there that orchestrate this type of thing every year. Hard work, that.

We ended off the weekend with Holly and Ellen hitting up a few of our favorite touristy hot spots: Kilmainham Gaol and the Guinness Brewery. Hopefully they had a good time, because I know we did. They got on a plane Sunday evening and we were forced to drag ourselves back to the reality that we had to be at work the next day.

What are we thankful for? Well, if the above doesn't say it enough, it is all about Ireland. Despite my personal frustrations with shops and availability, and being in a technological black hole, we wouldn't be able to do any of the great things were are doing or meet the people we are meeting if it weren't for Ireland and it's "open to architects" immigration policies.

So...THANK YOU IRELAND!