Thanksgiving in India!

We had 2 Thanksgiving celebrations this year: one with Target folks at a hotel restaurant on Thursday (ate outside!), and another in a friend's home with other American families and a family from the UK who'd lived in the US for many years and had come to love our Yankee tradition.

We have felt homesick this week! And sad to miss a 4-day stretch of holiday, too. It felt odd.

Yet, we are more mindful this year than ever of all we have to be thankful for. We made a "thankful tree", cutting out leaves and writing what we were thankful for on each one before pasting them to our "tree". Things like "access to clean water" made the list this year. Among Matthew's leaves: "pizza and ice cream."

Thanksgiving culinary endeavors required great creativity. After a pilot run with a butter pie crust that was too tough, I tracked down "granulated vegetable ghee"--the closest thing to shortening in the country. It worked. Even in my toaster oven.

I googled "sweet potato" for an image to show our driver and then found the word in Kannada (genasu). He found some for us at a local market. I hadn't seen them anywhere in stores but heard they were sold somewhere here. More like a yam, but pretty tasty roasted with onions, garlic and herbs.

Craisins can be rehydrated with water, red wine, orange zest and corn starch; they evolved into an edible cranberry relish.

One point of failure, however... "fresh cream" in India does not whip into anything resembling what we put on pie. Alas, we indulged in the twice-the-price imported squirt whip cream from France. The meal was redeemed for Hannah and Shae.

Below are a few photos of our gathering at a friend's home... lots of delicious home-cooked food, a well-prepared turkey from an Italian restaurant that imported them from the US, and lots of kids, too!