Happy Thanksgiving!!!

No, the Czech's do not celebrate our American Thanksgiving but we did! Our friends hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for about 70 people. I thought it was suppose to be about 40 but there was definitely more than 40 people there. In order to have enough food to feed everyone many people made food. We were tasked with making a turkey. I thought, "no problem". Then the reality started to set in.

My friend gave me the turkey to prepare. When she dropped off the turkey she said, "there may be feathers still on the bird that you need to take out. Also, the neck may not be cut off like they are on American turkeys so you may have to trim that. Also, keep in mind that the ovens here are convection and not like US ovens so the turkey won't take as long to cook.". At this point I thought, "oh my! What did I get myself into??". I brought the turkey upstairs and put it in the fridge. It did fit on the bottom shelf of the fridge as long as I took everything off that shelf and moved the next shelf up. I decided to see if it would fit in the oven. It did fit but just barely. I realized I needed a pan to cook the turkey in so I measured the oven and went to the local kitchen shop. It took a little bit but I found a pan and headed home. I went to put it in the oven to double check that it would fit and guess what? That's right. It didn't fit! It was just a hair too big. I decided I would wait until the morning and head to Tesco to find a new one. I asked Jason if he could stay home from work on Thanksgiving day rather than take a half day so that he could help me with the turkey. I felt like this needed to be a team effort. He agreed to stay home after he checked his work schedule and saw there was nothing critical. I was very thankful! I headed to Tesco in the morning looking for a big roasting pan, although not too big since it had to fit in our oven, and hopefully a turkey roasting bag. We had hopes of brining the turkey but we didn't have anything big enough to hold the turkey but I couldn't find any turkey roasting bags. Since we couldn't brine the turkey we decided on putting salt, pepper, butter and herbs under the skin o the turkey to keep it moist. So, after I plucked the feathers out of the turkey, Jason put the butter/herb mixture under the skin and we put it in the oven. the turkey barely fit in the oven...the legs were actually touching the side of the oven. It all worked out great and we had a nice moist tasty turkey when we were finished. I took the turkey off the bone and we brought it to our friends for dinner.

We had a great dinner with all the fixins...turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing plus a lot of pie. Sofia had her first taste of jello and loved it and Ali had a chocolate chip pie which she thought was very good. The kids had fun playing with the other kids that were there. Clark and Lucy's rooms were definitely not as neat and tidy when we left as they were when we arrived. All the kids had a blast playing in their rooms. It was a great Thanksgiving and a great time to say thanks for having such great friends in Prague.