Cold-weather Holidays

I bet you thought the title of this post was some sort of politically correct, non-denominational way to title a Christmas post. No, this post is really about Thanksgiving and Christmas. And this year I celebrated Thanksgiving in December. I hope you all saw the beginning of my Thanksgiving story (at the end of this post). Well, here's the continuation you have all been waiting for. Here we go:

So I went to the refrigerator and opened the door, and I saw the turkey, wrapped in plastic, thawed, and ready to go! The best part was that it was only 2.8 kilograms, approximately 6.2 pounds. Definitely the smallest whole turkey I have ever seen.

Now this whole cooking thing was quite an adventure. First, it was the first time I had ever attempted to cook so many things at once and try to time them to finish together. (Thanks for the lessons over Skype, mom!) Second, it was the first time most of my host family members had ever had these particular dishes, so it was fun to hear their reactions. Third, the available containers to cook things in were not necessarily what was called for; I had to improvise a little, but it all turned out okay in the end.

The menu: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans. Plus an apple crisp that I made a day ahead. I don't know about the rest of you Americans, but I would consider this a relatively small Thanksgiving meal, which was on purpose. Even so, my host family thought it was a ton of food.

Unfortunately I don't know how to carve a turkey and before I could try, my host mom took some poultry scissors to the bird and cut it up into little pieces and put them in a bowl. Which is probably what my attempt at carving it would have looked like anyway. To make the stuffing, I bought a loaf of bread a few days before and let it harden, then cut it up into little squares. I don't think they have instant stuffing here. Also, upon tasting the mashed potatoes, my host family immediately noticed the little chunks of potato that were left my by hand-mashing technique. Apparently mashed potatoes here have absolutely no little chunks and are perfectly smooth. In fact, they are called a potato purée.

So. It was an adventure, and I'm looking forward to next year when I can celebrate Thanksgiving with my biological family and finally learn how to carve a turkey.

They suggested taking a picture of the whole table and then didn't acknowledge the camera.... Maybe they wanted it to look candid, I don't know.

The Christmas festivities were...extensive. On the 20th of December, we went to my host grandparents' house in Marly for dinner. They have a swimming pool--inside! Also, the room next to the pool was full of exercise equipment and had a couch with a projector for watching movies. It was pretty cool. We got there a bit early, so I ended up seeing most of Benjamin Button in German. One of the things about family gatherings is that as soon as anybody shows up, they have to greet each other person in the room separately. For most people, this entails a handshake or three cheek-kisses (starting on the left) or both, with a few words of greeting and small talk. At the beginning, this process is relatively simple, but as more people arrive, it can take a long time.

For dinner, we had fondue--not a cheese fondue, but an oil to cook little pieces of meat in. This was accompanied by mild Spanish rice (the grandmother is from Spain, but I doubt that she ever makes too much spicy food; the Swiss wouldn't go for it). After eating, we played cards. It was the same game that I learned how to play the last time this side of the family met, and I did better this time. The game was followed by caroling. It was fun to learn the Swiss German Christmas songs. Some of them you would recognize, like Stille Nacht (Silent Night) and O Tannenbaum (I think this doesn't need translation). There were also others I had never heard before. Unfortunately, we sounded terrible, but of course nobody minded. After this came the opening of presents. One little host cousin in particular was very eager to open hers, which was assuredly bigger than she was. I got some 75% dark chocolate. Intense. The reason we were already opening presents on the 20th is that there were many different groups of family that couldn't all celebrate together at the same time for a couple of reasons. First, if both sides of the family were included, you'd probably have to rent out Union Station or something. (My host dad is one of eight children, I think he said.) Second, one set of grandparents had divorced and remarried.

This would not be the first gathering. This would also not be the last chocolate somebody gave me. On the 24th, all the same people from the 20th came to our house, except it was a different set of grandparents. In order to fit all seventeen or so people, we had to move the couches against the walls and set up the outside table inside. We served raclette. It was delicious. If you have never tried this dish, you should. It involves melting cheese with various small vegetables or meat pieces and then eating it over potatoes or toasted bread. There's a traditional way of melting the cheese in a fireplace or something that I've heard about, but we just used special raclette ovens on the table. This was followed by another round of singing and present-opening. I personally like the German word for this: "auspacken." It basically means "to unpack." So it's like suitcases and presents are the same, except unpacking one can be a chore. I'll let you guess which one that is.

On Christmas Day, my host dad wanted to go to a museum in Fribourg and I came along. I suspected the museum would be closed, but he said there had been nothing posted on the website to that effect. We drove to Fribourg, and of course the museum was closed. So we went to a restaurant and got something to drink. I enjoyed a hot Ovomaltine. It's like hot chocolate but malty. Inside the restaurant was this funny tree with white bark. I'm guessing it continued on the next floor up.

Also, the weather was acting very strange. When we left, it was raining slightly. By the time we were approaching the city, it was a nasty mix of rain and snow and ice. On the drive back, the sun was shining, and upon arriving back at home, there was a thin layer of new snow on the ground. Weird.

We ate Christmas dinner with my host aunt, uncle, and cousins in Plaffeien. We had little homemade bite-sized pizza things before the meal, and then a savory pastry with mushrooms and sauce, salad, meat rolled up with saffron and some kind of tomato filling, carrots, pommes frites (which are sort of fancy here, not like in the US, hence my reluctance to call them French fries), green beans with bacon wrapped around them, about six different kinds of Christmas cookies, ice cream (bought in a log shape and cut into slices with a knife), fresh pineapple (served with one of those awesome pineapple corer things that makes pineapple rings), plus Christmas tea. A veritable feast!

This was followed by more familial festivities throughout the holiday break, but I'll save those for the next post.