Mashed Potatoes and Mac&Cheese Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving started out like a normal day. I woke up and ate some oatmeal. It was 80some degrees outside. It didn't feel much like fall. But then at staff worship our good friend Vara announced to everyone that it was a special holiday in America and the principal added something about us relaxing, so basically they gave us the day off! We had planned to make something similar to Thanksgiving dinner for a few families here and show them a little bit of our American food, so we spent the morning cleaning our house and preparing for the evening. We invited our neighbors Ramana and Chandu, our friends Vara and Prim with baby Nancy, and Rajeev. All of them seemed excited for this and we had been keeping the meal a secret. Midmorning, the principal called our cell phone from 100 yards across campus to tell us to come to his house. So we did and they prayed for us on our special holiday and even served us some carrot cake!

Vara was excited about the array of dishes!

Lunch time came around and ended up having three different curries to try that were brought to us, one of them was even pumpkin curry! How appropriate. :) They were all delicious as usual and we were feeling pretty pampered. But then we got down to business preparing our thanksgiving dinner. Our goal was to feed them as much food as they do to us and make sure we served them just a little bit more even after they were stuffed! We just prayed that they would like the food. On the menu was mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese from the box, a green bean dish, a vegetable mixture of cauliflower, onions and carrots made in the oven, raw cucumber and beats, and some fresh pineapple to top it off! We began the cooking frenzy in the afternoon with lots of green bean snapping and veggie chopping. Sidney ran around campus locating enough chairs, pots, spoons, and plates for our group of nine. Before we knew it, our 7 o'clock dinner time had rolled around! Of course the power decided to flicker off and on every few minutes (it always seems to do this when we need it the most), so I had to improvise a little, but by 7:10 we were ready to go with the table set and all the dishes of food in place. The only thing we were missing was our guests! Then we remembered that we are in India. So they arrived right on time at 7:30 and we got started.

Our Thanksgiving candle lit table haha!

This photo speaks for itself! (Vara and Pramilla, baby Nancy) 

Neighbors - Chandu (left) & Ramana (right) My sister and brother.

Apple Cider! (Rajeev on the right)

Who says you need pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving?

This meal was priceless! They loved the food, especially the green beans, even though they weren't doused in chili powder! The best part of the meal was watching them eat with their spoons and forks. Ramana would lift up his plate close to his mouth and had both elbows sticking out. We even introduced them to ketchup and they were putting it on their mac and cheese and everything. I am proud to say that the first Thanksgiving meal I have prepared without my mother or grandma giving me step by step instructions turned out great. Trevor, Sid, and I had great team work in this effort and it paid off! After we ate, we introduced the tradition of going around the table and sharing what you are thankful for. It basically turned into everyone sharing how thankful they were for each other. They each told us how glad they were that they could meet us and get to know us as their brothers and sister and would never forget this time we shared together. They wanted to make sure that we never forgot them. I don't know if my heart has ever felt so satisfied after a Thanksgiving meal. Not only was my stomach full, but my heart happy watching our Indian families clean their plates of American food.

We finished off the evening by serving little tea cups of apple cider we got from an SM office package and some dessert. Trevor made some custard and I baked a carrot cake and even topped it with icing! They loved it, but they were sooo full. It felt good to fill their stomachs instead of the other way around. Although this Thanksgiving was far from home and my family, I was surrounded by love and new friends and now have a memory to always be thankful for.