It's Thanksgiving - Please Pass the Chicken

As Americans, living in The Netherlands on Thanksgiving Day is a bit surreal.

Absent are the omnipresent Thanksgiving decorations that adorn the schools, shopping malls and public places back in the States.

And the Dutch don't exactly get fired up about Pilgrims, despite the history of Pilgrim leaders living in Holland after fleeing England and before settling in Massachusetts.

(Truth be told, I didn't actually remember that - I just pulled it from Wikipedia. Josy, when reading this, couldn't believe my ignorance - apparently, this historical nugget isn't lost on Massachusetts natives like her.)

The day itself comes as something of an afterthought. A workday not unlike any other November workday. Oh, but wait, it's Thanksgiving - shouldn't we celebrate...?

While we'd talked for weeks about doing something special on Thanksgiving weekend, plans had a way unraveling the closer we got to the day itself. The hot idea of heading to Paris and EuroDisney for the first time got derailed when French train workers went on strike and highways turned into parking lots. Josy and I got preoccupied with work. The kids got sick. And, finally, Thanksgiving arrived and oh, look at the time, it's 4:30 in the afternoon.

I did the only thing a self-respecting Yank could do in this situation. I immediately headed to the store to buy the closest thing they'd have to a Thanksgiving dinner.

I waited patiently while Dutch shoppers at the meat counter ordered ahead of me. What on earth was that? Filet americain? God knows how they came to name this raw ground beef delicacy, eaten uncooked, after a country where nobody in their right mind would risk a slow, painful death by e.coli. To each their own - Josy loves the stuff.

Then again, she also can't get enough of drop, the Dutch candy that tastes a bit like American black licorice but roughly 1.75 trillion times more concentrated. And it comes in a spectrum of varieties, from the milder Really-Incredible-Horse-lick-Salty to the more extreme So-Salty-You'll-Shrivel-Up-Like-a-Slug-No-Really. Needless to say, I prefer red licorice.

My turn came. When I asked for a whole chicken, the clerk looked at me with a smile and asked if I might prefer turkey. Turkey? I nearly did a double take. They had turkey?

Maybe this shouldn't have been such a surprise in an area known for expats. But just because they had expacts, they didn't keep the stores open past 6pm or bother to stock more than one or two brands of any one item. Yet, turkey?

Alas, the smallest option was a 2.9kg bird that would probably take 3 hours to cook. Way longer than the kids would ever stand to eat. And no whole chickens remained. Chicken legs and thighs it would have to be.

Somehow, we managed to pull the key ingredients together. Stove-Top(TM) Stuffing. Cranberry sauce made from fresh cranberries. Pumpkin pie and crust - all of which I made from scratch because, well, they might stock turkey here on Thanksgiving but don't get your hopes up about pie crusts.

The Pilgrims would've been proud. If they'd ever bought in to the whole Thanksgiving mythology that a budding nation eventually fostered.

And the kids seemed to enjoy it, too. The pie, mostly. After downing his first piece in roughly 0.2 seconds, Ben sat back and appeared to gather his thoughts for a moment. "Daddy, can we really, really eat the whole pie tonight?"