Christgiving

This past weekend I went to Timişoara to celebrate the holiday season with Dan and other people in his life. We called our celebration "Christgiving," and we were bound and determined to do things the right way. We ended up with an American/Romanian/Turkish/Asian feast...

It really was an incredible weekend of friends and fun- we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie (eh...), played games, walked a lot in the rain, drank cappuccinos, and ATE.



The cookfest started when Dan and I went to the store and got nearly everything we needed, sans celery, ice cream, and… oh yeah… turkey. We returned back to his apartment and I got started with the cooking, while he ran to another store to try and find turkey. He returned with celery and ice cream, and set off again to find some turkey. He walked about 40 minutes to the biggest supermarket in town and found ONE turkey, but it weighed 7.5 kilograms, and totally would not have fit in his oven. He bought a chicken instead and some turkey cutlets.

While he was gone, I peeled potatoes, toasted bits of bread for stuffing, prepared the vegetables for the stuffing, made some chicken stock, made the gravy, made the glaze, made the stuffing, made the mashed potatoes, and got the green beans ready.

When Dan got back with the chicken, I was kind of sad because it looked so empty inside. Thanks to the lovely A~, we cooked it for about 30 minutes in salt water, while I made a mixture of rice, onions, paprika, and celery to stuff it with. A~ mixed up some tomato paste with garlic to spread over it, and then we used the cola glaze to pour it over the rest of the chicken. We put that into the oven, having NO idea how it would turn out.

I peeled and cut the apples for the apple crisp, and started to make it, spilling an ENTIRE bag of sugar in the process- it was a bit of a disaster, but kind of fun as well. We had that ready to put into the oven when the chicken was done, to cook during dinner.

While the chicken was cooking I grilled the turkey cutlets with some oil, paprika, and salt. They were delicious. I also cooked the corn and the green beans, and reheated the gravy, the stuffing, and the mashed potatoes.

It was GOOD.

Basically- we did this thing RIGHT, and had a really wonderful meal together. The first time I cooked an entire Thanksgiving feast nearly by myself, but... hey, it worked out pretty well.