Moroccan Martha Stewart! Or maybe Sumisha?

I’m no Martha Stewart, but after this past weekend I do feel a sense of domestic accomplishment. I hosted my very first Thanksgiving dinner! This is a big event for any young woman, but hosting a Thanksgiving in a strange land, in less than ideal kitchen conditions (say that three times fast!) made it all the more interesting.  My kitchen is a pretty good size, but my refrigerator has been on the fritz. I have a two burner gas powered stove, and an oven about the size of a microwave. I was expecting 12 to 15 guest. Potential for disaster, right?.

I felt like we all needed to take a moment and remember what we are thankful for, so this was our Thanksgiving turkey board.

A lot of people traveled a pretty far distance to attend, so we had a bit of a get together the night before. We had chili made with turkey sausage, and cornbread.

Everyone took some time to meet Monster Fridge. He was a big hit, participating in conversations and keeping all of our food at a very acceptable temperature.

We had volunteers from all over the south of Morocco, newbies and those of us who have been here for over a year, a fullbright scholar, and even a tourist for the occasion.

The day started off at around 10am. I had done most of the chopping, baking and seasoning in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, so we were basically assembling the dishes that would be served hours later. We started off the day with chocolate chip banana bread with nutella, a few hours later we had a veggie tray with hummus dip, french onion dip and spinach dip.

Around 3pm while waiting for some guests who were held up by the weather we had pumpkin/apple soup and a green salad with a garlic herb vinaigrette.

Before the actual meal, all of us got in a circle and listened to the Star Spangled Banner with our hands over our hearts, then grace was said and Thanksgiving was official!

In this photo (below) you can clearly see sweet potato casserole, lentil stuffing, and bacon wrapped turkey.

Here we have, squash/cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, twice baked potato casserole with bacon bits. We also had garlic butter sauteed green beans, and tons of home made dinner rolls.

For desert we had a caramel apple cake, and pumpkin and apple pies. Seriously amazing stuff.

 

I couldn’t believe how well Thanksgiving went (it was this past weekend). What more can you ask for? Great food, amazing company, and a little bit of the Sahara desert.

Now that it’s actually Thanksgiving and I’m all alone in my apartment listening to political chanting about the upcoming elections, I’m feeling good. Things are hard here, but always trying to improve my situation. I’ve been here for 14 months and I’ve got another year to go. But this was my last Thanksgiving in Morocco.