Happy индейка Day!

Thanksgiving - it's really all about the food (oops, I mean, the things you're thankful for), isn't it?

Oh, and the title means "Happy Turkey Day," in case you hadn't put that one together. Indeed, it was a happy Thanksgiving for us here, even though we're a long way from family and most of our friends. To make up for that, we invited over almost every Russian friend we have and introduced them to the concept of Thanksgiving. It was on Saturday, as most everyone worked on the real day, but it was close enough and was a lot of fun.

I've got some pictures below, but I have to tell you a little about how the evening went first. The lovely B was committed to making the evening as accurate and fun as possible for our guests to see what the real thing is like, and she spent a lot of energy getting things ready. Props to her for that. She even managed to track down a turkey, albeit a small one, so that we were each able to have something fairly close to what we would have eaten back home in North Carolina. We noticed that Russians quite liked the turkey, even if several said they had never eaten it before. It's just not culturally something they eat here.

It was a bit interesting doing the whole "I'm thankful for ..." routine in a different language, but everyone seemed to like it. We had quite a variety of guests, even one who thanked Allah when it came to his turn. Another lady who came had become a member of the family in the past week, so she was full of thankfulness for several things (her worldview used to be similar to the other guest's that I mentioned).

OK, so the Russians did get the hang of the food thing pretty quickly. Of course, I think it's pretty much culturally universal to get in line and load up on food when you're at a party, so maybe there wasn't much of an adjustment there. They didn't care much for the sweet iced tea, though, so the universally spoken language of Coca-Cola came to the rescue.

You may not eat these at your Thanksgiving, but you're missing out. B makes these little appetizers that we started off with out of dates wrapped around a pecan, and then the whole thing is wrapped in bacon and held together with a toothpick. Really, really tasty. Crunchy, sweet, and salty, all blending together into the perfect appetite stimulant.

And speaking of appetite stimulants, it's a good thing we had one, since there was lots of food. From left, going clockwise - stuffing/dressing, broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, a different stuffing, turkey, and gravy. Yum!

Steven played with his friend Pasha all night, including sharing a "ride" on the rocking chair together.
Of course, there were desserts - pumpkin pie, and ...

... blackberry cobbler! Super tasty, if maybe not the healthiest day ever. We were able to find most of the ingredients here, but I think B did have our new friend Julie bring some pecans with her from the US for the appetizers.

So that's about it. I did manage to take a short video of everyone just chit-chatting and eating and Steven just being thankful. The whole video thing seems to be very well received, so I'm trying to put them up regularly. Before I let you go, just to preview our next post - we'll have to show you the Christmas decorations B put up today, and maybe we'll work a pregnant belly picture in there as well (per special request). Enjoy the video: