Thanksgiving. A holiday, that i’m just getting familiar with, since Hungarian traditions are still living in me strongly. Honestly, I like this holiday a lot. I can see that it brings people just as close to each other as Easter does in Europe.

So I respect this tradition a lot and since I usually have American guests, I’m trying to take it just as serious as they do. Because of that, there was a lot of preparation going on this year. I made some small changes though, like preparing the turkey in parts, not whole (I hope it’s not a sacrilege) since in my experience, a large part of the whole turkey usually goes to waste. That would be a sacrilege to me, because I’m always trying to produce as little waste as possible. So from the back, neck part and the gizzard, I made hot meat soup with a kind of knödel (called grízgaluska in Hungary). As an appetizer, some turkey liver pate with a touch of tequila. The wings were marinated in white wine before roasting, then I served it with forest mushroom sauce on the top and pumpkin shaped pasta on the side. The thighs were marinated with rosemary and oregano and then I cooked them slowly, till they got crispy outside, but friable. The breasts were rolled into katafi pasta (which is my new favorite, I will write a whole post dedicated to it later) and they got filled with cheese. I served the breasts and the thighs with potato and french salad. Of course, there were cookies and some red wine to make it easier to consume this amount of food.

So this is how we spent Thanksgiving, together with the neighbors. Since the celebration is not just about eating, we had to favor our souls. Feri played the accordion for us, and we were singing along. One part of the group played the cards, the other part played table tennis on a table we had set up for this occasion in our community hall, which is also the diner and ballroom of the Reformed church. We are lucky enough to have this hall in our court and they are so welcoming, that we could use it.