An American Thanksgiving in Segou

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all! Our Thanksgiving was a complete success. My friend Steffen (a soldier in the German Army who's living in Segou for the next few years training soldiers) offered up his super sweet house for us Americans to take over for the holiday. He has an oven, a microwave, a fridge, a flatscreen tv, dvd player -- his house is hooked up. His girlfriend Danielle is American, so we decided to have a German and American Thanksgiving bash. Yuri, Steffen, Danielle and I were the main cooks. We begun at noon on Wednesday buying food at the market and then we were off to Steffen's house to begin cooking. We were preparing a surprisingly authentic Thanksgiving feast, given the limited resources we had in Mali. It also was the most raw Thanksgiving meal I've ever been a part of -- EVERYTHING was cooked from scratch. We bought two live turkeys (I stood by while Steffen's housekeeper sawed their heads off -- very bloody). We bought fresh ingredients for Green Bean Casserole (we had to create the french fried onions and cream of mushroom from scratch too). We bought a giant JE (the closest thing to a pumpkin you'll find in Mali) and made pumpkin bread and two pumpkin pies. We made a sweet potato dish and a squash casserole. We dried out loafs of bread and created stuffing from scratch. We made spaghetti, meat sauce and garlic bread. We made a banana cream pie, which was AMAZING. We made gravy from the turkey juice. And I even tried the mashed potatoes (which I still don't like!).

(Yuri and Emily cooking on our tiny stove)

(The feast)

(My pies)

The whole dinner was fantastic. Yuri, Danielle and I cooked from Wednesday afternoon until 2 AM, then woke up early and cooked until 7 pm on Thanksgiving. Steffen lives by two other German volunteers -- Arnim and Mamadou. They also let us use their kitchens and ovens for cooking. So we were running from house to house with the turkeys and casseroles and such in the African sun. Other Malians must've thought we were crazy. We were going nonstop for a day and a half. Then we feasted. About 20 peace corps volunteers and German volunteers showed up, and we had blast. We all ate until we couldn't stand up straight, then we watched Spaceballs. We had so much food left over that 10 of us came back Friday afternoon for turkey sandwiches and leftovers! My biggest claims to fame were the two pumpkin pies, the banana cream pie, the green bean casserole and the two turkeys (Yuri and I mostly did the turkeys). We all helped each other out, but we also had our own dishes that we took charge with. I'd never made a pie before (or a pie crust, for that matter), and I didn't even have recipe for the merangue that went on top of the banana pie, but they all turned out delicious. I can't wait to go over to Steffen's and bake some more!

(Dinner time)

(Kyle finishing his first round of food)

So although we were halfway around the world, America was representing in Mali! We had a great time. And I'll be thinking about that dinner for the next year!