Thanksgiving

For the last three years (2011-2013) I have not been able to spend Thanksgiving with my family. As anyone who is far away from family during the holidays knows, this sucks. And if your mom cooks as well as my mom does, you'll know that this sucks even more.

But we did have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Lao-style. We DID have to work, both the day of Thanksgiving, and the day after (in Louisiana, called "Aradian day"?) but a lot of people are gone so it was more relaxed.  Our boss and his wife graciously opened their house to all of us who are far away from home, and rented big tables so we could all sit outside in the great 70o weather (this was my first Thanksgiving outside!) It all came together quite beautifully, which for a while I was worried would not happen...

For the Thanksgiving meal I volunteered to make Cranberry sauce (something I've been making ever since I was 7, so it's like my own Thanksgiving tradition) and the Sweet potato casserole (Marshmallow-style, not pecan). I didn't think it would be EASY to find all the ingredients, but I didn't realize it would be that hard. 

I expected a couple stores that had Expat ingredients to stoke-pile Thanksgiving ingredients. None did. 

Monday night I spent two hours roaming the aisles of my usual "grocery" stores ("grocery" is a relative term... like mentioned in earlier blogs, it's more of a really big dollar store than anything). No luck on sweet potatoes or cranberries, though I DID find large marshmallows. 

The next day at lunch I went to Joma (the most awesome chain "restaurant"/cafe in Vientiane) and asked if they would let me buy cranberry sauce, which they had because their seasonal sandwich was a "Turkey Dinner" one. They would not let me. One of the ladies said "Oh you can get it at (insert Lao name here!" but then she couldn't explain where it was. Another guy help but after 5 minutes of jotting down directions I realized he had gotten confused and was directing me to a local M-Point (convenience store).

Then I went to Lao Plaza- the hotel we used to live in- where they were having a Thanksgiving buffet. I just wanted to buy cranberry sauce. Denied. 

So Tuesday night I went to D-Mart, another "grocery store", looking for sweet potatoes and cranberries/ cranberry sauce. I thought I found a weird-looking sweet potato, but I ended up buying something that I now believe to be a radish. 

Then I went home and complained about it on Facebook. This turned out to be the best move I could make, because a coworker's wife was out shopping the next day and found ALL of my ingredients- cranberry sauce, REAL sweet potatoes (not the purple/ black ones they usually have here) and MINI marshmallows. Divine intervention all up on my Thanksgiving meal :) 

I made the sweet potatoes (AWESOME recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-potato-casserole-ii-2/) and "made" the cranberry sauce (took it out of the can, heated it up and added orange zest) and Thursday night we had a great Thanksgiving - everything an American could want in a Thanksgiving meal. We even went around the table and said what we were thankful for. 

And I wore my "Thanksgiving" (yoga) pants. Lots of give. For when I went back for thirds.