As the leaves turn golden to signify autumn, the annual celebration of giving thanks and sharing a meal returns.
Growing up, Thanksgiving dinners for me were more of a cultural hub of ethnic foods than the “traditional” family meal of turkey, potatoes and warm apple pies.
A few years ago, my friends and I decided to create our own special Thanksgiving dinner, since most of us had never had the western style dinner. We wanted to create something that would last through the years and a day where we would all set aside everything to sit down, eat and be merry.
Oh, and the chaos ensues.
After scrambling to find a roasting pan – because surprise, surprise, none of us had one – we searched high and low for the little-used oven thermometers.
We poured over various recipes, evaluating how long it would take to cook each dish, from the turkey to the selection of pies: apple or pumpkin?
In the end, we settled on a simple maple-glazed turkey and determined that as our first Thanksgiving dinner, we would go big.
From the appetizers of sweet potato fries to the homemade dinner rolls, we flipped through page after page of cookbooks and glossed magazines.
We debated between fresh rosemary to ground black pepper, to how to make the “perfect” gravy.
Since that first turkey dinner with friends, it’s become an annual tradition to rotate from one friend’s house to another (something I will Skype on this year – oh the wonders of technology).
However, more important than enjoying the succulent juices from a golden roasted turkey or the delicious wafts from a homemade baked pumpkin pie, is the time spent trying to whip everything up together.
Between the trying not to drop the raw turkey on the ground (they can be slippery beasts) to flour exploding into the air, there are the shouts to lower the oven temperature and newspapers waving in the air over the fire alarm.
There’s the uncontrollable laughter when a recipe goes wrong and the moments that will forever be remembered as silent inside jokes between the closest of friends.
To everyone Grand Forks, Christina Lake, Greenwood and throughout the Boundary, here’s to a thankful and loving weekend.
– Cassandra Chin is reporter for the Grand Forks Gazette
