Ziuă de Turkey

November 28, 2011 at 5:16 pm | Posted in Friends, Transylvania | 13 Comments
Tags: Children, Expats, Family, Food, Friendship, Holidays, Milestones, Relationships, Romania, Thanksgiving

Ziuă de Turkey: How to Celebrate Thanksgiving as an Expat

1. Schedule your feast for Saturday. Because everyone will be working Thursday. And Friday.

2. Running up to Kroger to buy a frozen turkey is not an option. Decide whether to buy a live turkey from a friend of a friend, who will also, um, ready it to be cooked.

3. Scour the stores for sweet potatoes. Discover that they come in all colors. Including purple.

4. Understand that cream-of-anything soup is an American invention. So are frozen hash browns. And those crispy fried onion thingies.

5. Spend the better part of two days preparing a Thanksgiving feast. This guarantees your children won’t eat a thing.

6. Mulled win, or vin fiert as the Romanians call it, will be enjoyed. And spilled. And enjoyed some more.

7. Make brownies from your precious stash of Duncan Hines mixes mailed from the States. Don’t forget to share them.

8. Have the children perform the blessing. Make sure it includes jazz hands.

9. Don’t be surprised when your son falls out of his chair at the children’s table. No less than three times. Blame it on the half a loaf of banana bread he single-handedly consumed.

10. Break your leg about three months before Thanksgiving. This guarantees the time you spend fixing plates, doing dishes, and chasing after children hopped up on cinnamon apples will be minimal.

11. When in Romania, do as the Romanians do: Serve sparkling water. With a nip of homemade grape juice. Or ţuică. Noroc!

12. Decide it’s time to end the evening when the children start throwing things at each other’s heads.

13. Be grateful. For old traditions and new ones. For family far away and friends close by. For frost on the trees and cheddar cheese in the deli section.

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving? What were you most thankful for? And was there cream-of-something soup involved?

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Fluffy Bunnies in Romania:
Read the tales. See the photos.

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