Happy Thanksgiving!

The Saturday before Thanksgiving Andrea and I hosted a huge Thanksgiving feast for all of our falang friends and Lao coworkers. Since the Lao staff never let us help pay or cook when they have events, Andrea wanted to treat all the Lao staff to a big dinner to give back, and I was going to help by being her sous-chef. Since we were preparing to cook for around 30 people, it turned into a full week affair.

• Monday: We had to start off by buying all the dry ingredients (flour, oats, etc) and wet ingredients (vanilla, oil, etc) on Monday night. At two stores in Luang Prabang they have a few western foods, including canned cranberry sauce, canned green beans, Dijon mustard, and gravy packets.
• Tuesday: Andrea prepped any dishes that had multiple steps, for example roasting the pumpkin, frying the bacon, and making the dessert.
• Wednesday: Big trip to the market.  As I usually go to the market on Fridays with my Lao teacher, I asked if we could go on Wednesday instead because I had to cancel on Friday. We bought 6 kilos of potatoes, 4.5 kilos of carrots, 30 eggs, 2 kilos onions, 2 kilos of mushrooms, and a few more items. Good thing I went with Geo (my teacher) so we could ride her motor bike.  I would not want to lug all of that home on my bike.
• Thursday: cleaning and making sure we had enough sleep in preparation of Friday and Saturday!
• Friday: Turkeys arrived! Unfortunately, the 4 turkeys we had originally bought and were supposed to come on Thursday never showed up. As a back up plan, one Lao staff member asked his mom to send 2 turkeys from his town (2 hours away) and they came on the bus. Live turkeys being put on a regular bus with people... enough said. Our driver Ai Mai went 4 hours in a different direction to pick up 2 to more turkeys.  They all arrived Friday night at which time we had to kill and dress them.  Luckily, I did not actually have to do any of this and I just watched two boys from the office perform the dirty deeds.  After the turkeys were dressed, Andrea and I went home and cooked for the next 6 hours until midnight.



1) drain their blood when they were still alive so that their heart could pump all the blood out 2) put them in boiling water to kill them and loosen the feathers 3) pluck them 4) cut their heads off and take out all the innards. 

• Saturday: Cleaning, cooking turkeys and heating up all the sides, getting ready, people arrive at 6:00 

Carrots with honey-mustard glaze, turkey, green bean casserole,
mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin casserole,
pumpkin pie, and apple spice cake with cream cheese frosting

Overall, it was a super tiring affair to cook for 30 people (32 ended up showing up!), especially because I have never cooked for more than my immediate family before, and never for Thanksgiving or in a foreign country. But it was completely worth it to see how much the Lao staff enjoyed it! Their favorite dish seemed to be the turkey, but the pumpkin casserole (aka sweet potato casserole but made with a pumpkin looking vegetable instead) was the second favorite which was a surprise to us since pumpkin is not used in sweets here (unlike the US with pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, etc).



Aaron's delicious plate!

Our living room filled with friends!



Pick and Khamhoung killing the turkeys, Na really enjoying
 the turkey legs!, very full table but half the food gone, everyone enjoying the meal