A Guangzhou Thanksgiving

 I anticipate a busy couple days off this week, so I am distributing my blog writing over a few days. It’s Monday as I write this, and I have just finished writing a long shopping list. You see, I am attempting to host Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. It’s my very first Thanksgiving away from home and family, and in an attempt to not be overcome by holiday blues (let’s consider this a trial run for Christmas next month… that’s gonna be a doozy, no matter what I do), I concocted the wild plan to host my own Thanksgiving for a few of my fellow ex-pat friends. Well, let’s just start with a few of my immediate problems, shall we?

            1. Where the heck am I going to find turkey in Guangzhou?

            2. I don’t have an oven, and my stove only has two burners.

            3. I own two cooking vessels: a wok and a small pot.

            4. My flatmate is a vegan.

            5. I’m sure I can find cranberry sauce somewhere in this town, but where?

            6. We have two plates, two bowls, 2 mugs, and 4 sets of silverware.

I take problem solving as a personal challenge, and it’s what makes life worth living, right? Let’s get to it. Turkey in it’s traditional form is out. It’s probably prohibitively difficult, but I wasn’t even going to try. After all, I don’t have an oven. I plan to solve that problem tomorrow by going out and buying a tabletop oven… yes, I basically mean a toaster oven. So, size-wise, roasting any sort of meat is out. Solution 2: I could buy a whole roast chicken. But it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving, you know? So my final solution is this: sliced deli turkey from the American import grocery store. Is it going to cost an arm and a leg and my firstborn child? Yes, but hot open-faced turkey sandwiches? Worth it. And payday is next week, anyway.

Whatever you paid per pound for you turkey, I can beat it.

Speaking of the American import grocery store (Corner’s Deli, underneath the CITIC plaza, if you have arrived here via a Google search for “Thanksgiving Guangzhou” hoping for help – you know I tried it, too), I am almost certain they will have canned cranberry sauce and possibly even stuffing mix, as well. If they don’t, I have two backup plans. Plan B:  Kitchen Carnival (in Zhujiang New Town). Plan C: homemade stuffing with dried cranberries [potentially the best plan, except for the extra work in my tiny little kitchen].

Cooking and eating vessels aren’t really much of a problem: I really ought to get around to owning drinking glasses and one of my guests has volunteered to bring paper plates. No, the biggest brain cramp in the vegan (and two vegetarian guests) element.

Googling “vegan Thanksgiving” actually gets you dozens (well, thousands, but who looks beyond the first two pages?) of really helpful suggestions and recipes. Honestly, vegan food can be delicious-looking, and it really doesn’t seem all that hard (side recommendation: the Youtube series “Cooking with the Vegan Zombie.” It’s got recipes. And zombies. Really, what more could you want?). Except, except: they pretty much assume you have access to a Whole Foods or an organic grocery store or at the very least, that your local shop carries vegan butter and soy creamer and some strange product called vegan cheese (I don’t want to think too hard about it). Hey, vegan bloggers: I went to Hong Kong just to get some quinoa! But oh thank goodness I bought some: apparently, it’s a protein substitute, so persimmon, orange, and apple quinoa will be our vegan main dish. And vegan maple pumpkin pie for dessert. 

Time passes quickly in the past tense.

Part 2:

Phew! It’s over. The guests are gone, and the dishes are (mostly) washed. It was quite fun, and I’ll call it a success. But let’s give you a bit of a recap.

Tuesday shopping went well, if long. I hit up the vegetable market, then went over to the Tianhe area to spend an ungodly sum on Western foodstuffs (Ocean Spray cranberry juice! Stovetop stuffing mix!). I did end up needing to go to Zhujiang, too, but I managed to get everything on my list except canned pumpkin. Alas, I had to make soup and pie from scratch. It’s better that way, anyway. Last on my list, I picked up a small oven at Gomz electronics store. It is always so fun to buy a big ticket item in a department store. First, you find a salesperson – they’re usually hovering behind you, so that’s easy. Then, you tell them which one you want. They write your name and the product number/price on a ticket, which you take to the cashier and pay. The cashier gives you a receipt, which you take back to your salesperson, who dispatches another clerk to the storeroom to get the actual item (or if it’s smaller, say, a thumb drive, they unlock the cabinet and get one out for you). When it arrives, if it is a small appliance, they often take it out of the box and plug it in to show you that it does in fact work. Finally, you get your item and you’re good to go. The only snag here, for foreigners, is our pesky foreign names. They are often confused to no end by my name. Which one is my surname? Which is my given name? Is that an ‘n’ or a ‘w’? Is this one word or two or three?

New oven!

I immediately tried out my oven by baking the pie on Tuesday evening. I also made the soup. They both came out well. I roasted my pumpkin first, which the oven did lickety-split. The pie, too, cooked evenly and problem-free. I am so happy with having an oven. I’ve already got a list of things to make (smörbullar, cookies, lasagna, baked apples, baked potatoes, more pie…).

Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crumb Topping.

This morning, I made mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, vegan stuffing, roasted garlic, roasted green beans, Golden Orchard Quinoa (recipe by Kathy on Healthy Happy Life blog), and cut up my deli turkey into rough as-if-off-a-roast-bird slices, which I heated up in gravy. A couple things about my vegetables. First, think of green beans. Got it? Okay, look at mine:

They're Jolly Green Giant sized!

And while we're at it, let's talk sweet potatoes. Did you know they came in purple? Neither did I, until I started peeling. And yes, mashed purple potato looks exactly like homemade play dough.

Apparently, purple sweet potatoes are common in Japan.

Also today, I popped out to grab some water and soy milk from the store so my guests would have something other than boiled tap water and cranberry juice to drink. I decided to be really fancy while I was at it, so I walked up the road a bit to where there is a cluster of three or four fancy wine shops. Now, this was a heck of a lot classier than my usual wine-buying experience (usually a place called Bootleggers). I walked in, and, as it was 10 o’clock in the morning, I was the only customer. This means I got my own trail-behind-me clerk, and another clerk watched us from the counter. I perused the selection (US, France, Italy, but also South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and others), which ranged from price-I-would-actually-pay to holy-heck (but that’s true in most wine shops) and finally picked a French chardonnay (do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? Yeah, no, I Googled ‘thanksgiving wine pairings’). My clerk helpfully got me a chilled bottle (because I’m going to drink it immediately? At 10:15am?) and the cashier clerk rings me up while he puts it in a nice bottle-dimension cloth bag. Then he carried it to the door for me, which he held open while I exited. Yeah.

So, finally, it was down to trying to get everything warmed up for dinner at the same time. This is a challenge. And honestly, I could have not bothered, as half my guests were 30 minutes late, and so things were getting a little lukewarm again by then. But it was fun, nonetheless, and everyone said nice things about the food. That said, I have tons of leftovers, but I blame my (totally inherited, thanks Mom) tendency to overestimate the intake capacity of a dinner guest.

Dinner for 8 (feeds 16)

Despite the work and the challenge of finding ingredients – oh, who am I kidding, I loved the challenge – I really enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving and having friends over. Of my six guests, only two of them are Americans. One is Chinese, Polish, one is from the Philippines, and one is Canadian. Of the Americans, one is Columbian-American and one is Chinese-American, so they told interesting childhood stories of celebrating this holiday as part of immigrant families. For three of my guests, this was their first Thanksgiving. It was fun to be able to share and compare our traditions.

We’re not so different, you see. We all have things for which we are thankful. For me, I am thankful for friends (who helped me do the dishes after dinner, despite my protests), for the opportunity to live and work in a foreign country (despite the occasional difficulties and annoyances), and for my family (even if I can’t be with you this Thanksgiving). I am thankful for support when I need it and good advice when I ask for it. I am thankful for being alive and being loved. So Happy Thanksgiving, all.