I find myself looking wistfully up at the sky and saying in my best Homer Simpson voice, “Mmmm… Turkey….” *of course accompanied by drool dribbling down chin, wide open mouth and tongue loosely hanging out to the left*
Does anyone know where one can find a fresh turkey in the Berlin/Potsdam area??? My dog walking buddies suggest I check out a wild game stand that’s open on the weekends in Werder-Havel (or someplace that sounds like Werder-Havel), which I will do if no one here has any special turkey connections. I suppose that I can live with the chicken-sized frozen turkeys they sell here, but I really don’t want to, especially on Thanksgiving. Although I guess I won’t be cookin’ no 22-pounder with my little German oven. Oh, today on “Das perfecter Profi Dinner”, one of the guys had a large oven (okay, American-sized), so they are available. I will have one some day. I will also have a garbage disposal, even if I have to sell my first born child – okay, maybe that’s a bit expensive on second thought.
So my original plan was to have a blow out Thanksgiving/Going Away Party and invite anyone who felt like coming out to Potsdam, but that would require cooking large amounts of food, and although I am not modest and have to admit that my Thanksgiving dinners rock! I’m afraid it’s something my little German oven may not be up to. I must consider the logistics of a large Thanksgiving. Can one buy hams in Germany? Hmmm…
I have a pumpkin. And I need to carve it before Halloween. This will be trying given my current average energy level of zilch. My plan is to make pumpkin pie out of the innards as a test run. I’ve never made pumpkin pie completely from scratch on my own before, though I have assisted many times. I will see if it’s worth the extra effort to do it again for Thanksgiving, otherwise I will just be buyin’ some canned pumpkin from the English/American Food Store in downtown Potsdam. Or I may make a foray out to KaDeWe if the energy levels recover in the near future. My custom orthotic inserts will be done on Monday in a week, so that should help. Oh yeah, and “Lady In The Water” is playing in Potsdam that day too! I haven’t decided yet if I will tell Rainer that “Das Parfum” is playing tomorrow night. He desperately wants to see it and told me that I have to go with him since I made him see “Superman Returns” with me. Ach, the trials of married life!
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Oh – re pumpkin pie. A friend of mine got expert advice from another US blogger in Berlin about where to source ingredients etc. Remind me and I ‘ll see if she still has the details…
Hey you can find many suggestions at this Thanksgiving Blog. It’s very resourceful….so check it out real soon!!!
as to info about Das Parfum see my page. andrea has finally left her review if the movie.
about the ham-question: this is ham-country, babe, of course you can get all the varieties at your local butcher shop. and if they even specialise you’ll find LOADS.
happy thanksgiving!
turkeys are easy. you go to Karstadt or any big supermarket and tell them how big you want it and when. They come from France and are really excellent, much better than American turkeys. But don’t make the mistake I did and get one that is too big. Not only did it not fit in my reasonably large oven, but even with the great wings amputated it took 2 days to cook.
And we were eating turkey for a year afterwards.
(Sorry, I didn’t sign in properly before leaving that last comment)
I saw das Parfum a couple of weeks ago, was kind of disappointed– they spent far too much money and forgot to create interest in the characters… I guess it is worth seeing for the orgy scene.
Mmm turkey! I was going through the same debate as you about the turkey. I thought it would be fun to have a proper thanksgiving dinner and invite everyone over to sample my version of this holiday but the turkey started stressing me out. In the end we will be celebrating my boyfriend’s birthday in Rome and it looks like I will miss out altogether on Thanksgiving.
As far as pumpkin pie goes, save the effort! After all the work, it turns out the canned pumpkin is just as good (imho). But hey, sometimes it is fun to kill an afternoon doing something completely from scratch and seeing the results.
Good Luck!
Funny story — People kept asking my German exchange student how they celebrate Thanksgiving in Germany.
Bowleserised: Thanks! But I think I’m set with making pumpkin pies. I did it for a party in Berlin once and my neighbors were shocked that you could actually eat pumpkin and I had to give them all the recipe.
Rita: I’m not a big ham fan, so I never looked. I’ll just need to go to a butcher and see what they’ve got. It would be good for a party cause you can cook it the day before and serve it cold.
Vailian: So, Geoffry was you if I understand right? I will head over to Real and see if they can order me one. How big a turkey fits in a normal German-sized oven anyway? And we didn’t go to Parfum. Orgy scene huh? Maybe it’ll be good for a rental.
Michelle: It is a lot of effort to commit to. And I agree that the canned stuff is just as good, I just haven’t made one from scratch since helping my grandma out when I was a kid. Have fun in Rome!
Grafs: Crazy, but not surprising. I was once asked by an American how Germans celebrate July 4th.
@ christina: NOOOO, you don’t cook ham!!! that’s cruel! ok, you can buy it cooked (those hams are massive!), but you simply cannot cook a german smoked ham. that would be just wrong.
happy turkey-day!
See! I don’t know anything about ham! Well, if you don’t need to cook it, that’s even better!