Court Garrettson carving the Thanksgiving turkey
The "Russian Queso"
Thanksgiving 2009, Воронеж style was a great success. A huge success really. One of the Russian gals we were with was overheard exclaiming about our boys, “They cook, they dance, they’re funny, and they’re going to be officers in the military. They’re too good to be true!” And I was inclined to agree. I was truly impressed by the turnout that we managed in difficult circumstances with foreign ingredients. We had two perfectly cooked turkeys with some of the best stuffing I’ve had the pleasure of eating, delicious cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, salads, sweet carrots, sweet corn, two pumpkin pies, an apple pie, several cakes (carrot and chocolate), wine, champagne, vodka, oh and I almost forgot, these potato bread rolls that Brenden made from scratch. He worked from 3 PM to 11 PM the previous night getting ingredients and just making the dough! Court Garretson, one of our seniors, got man of the match award with making one of the turkeys, the pumpkin pies and the apple pie, slaving away in the kitchen for hours before the party started. I was charged with making an appetizer so I for some odd reason settled on queso and tortilla chips. If there was going to be anything that I couldn’t make here, it would be that… So I went into improvise mode and wandered around the grocery store trying to make the best of what they had. Instead of Velveeta cheese and salsa, I ended up with two bottles of extra hot ketchup with peppers, spreadable Russian cheese, several sprigs of green onion, a clove of garlic and four bags of tortilla chips (the surprise find of the night) and two bottles of champagne (I seem to recall that whenever we do a holiday toast at home there’s always champagne involved, so I imposed this little family tradition on all present last night). I mixed in all the “salsa” with about half the container of cheese, added in about five sprigs of green onion, chopped up, then diced the entire clove of garlic into fine pieces and mixed it all. To my everlasting shock, this random concoction turned out to be a great success and it was pretty much gone by the time the food was ready. It would have been better warm, but there was a critical lack of stove space so it was a good thing I didn’t have cheese that needed to be melted! We had a Thanksgiving champagne toast, we all made beautiful speeches and it was time for the feast. The night ended with hours of dancing and laughing and just generally having a great time. I think Brenden and Rebecca (one of our USAFA gals) were DJing (and doing a great job of it) and through a computer malfunction, my iPod was the music selection- it did me proud (from hip-hop and Russian dance music to country slow dance songs and relaxing ‘70s classics, there was everything- we had people waltzing and fox-trotting on the floor at one point). Luckily for me, that meant I had home field advantage on the dance floor because there isn’t a song on there that I wasn’t familiar with. It was a wild and crazy night! To be sure, I would have loved to have been with my family on this Thanksgiving, the first I’ve ever spent away from home, but I had the next best thing: a wonderful Thanksgiving with incredible friends. People I never knew existed three months ago and will likely never see again after I leave here, but who will forever have a place in my memory as people whose combined individuality, whose strengths and faults, whose sense of humors and quirks have helped to make this the best three months of my life. I suppose have a lot to be thankful for this year.
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