Happy Thanksgiving! November 27, 2008
Posted by Christina in China.Tags: China, cooking, food, living, spaghetti, Thanksgiving
trackback
I was only vaguely aware of the holiday (there are no presents involved so what what’s the big deal?). Maybe it started last week when a student asked what Thanksgiving songs are there.
Um.
If I was better at thinking on my feet, I would have made up a warm fuzzy about Indians sharing their pumpkin pie with the kindhearted, yet needy pilgrims, but I just explained that we don’t have Thanksgiving songs. I’m not sure the song-obsessed Chinese got this but whatevs.
So Chris and I (the only two Americans around here) didn’t have any plans to celebrate the holiday. Being two vegetarians we weren’t going to go through the trouble of finding a turkey substitute (Peking Duck?) but then a couple days ago, Robert gave us a bag of spaghetti.
SPAGHETTI!
This is a hot commodity as you must take a minimum hour and a half train to hellish Zhengzhou to find normal noodles that you can slather with sauce and don’t congeal into a giant heap when you cook them. He explained he had loads and I guess he was in a good mood so hell yeah, hand over those noodles!
I decided it’d be fun to celebrate the holiday by having spaghetti and cooking our own marinara sauce- since you also can’t buy that in Anyang. I’d tried this once before with moderate success but with Robert’s confidence (“shit, man. It’s easy”) I decided to try again.
It really was easy- throw tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic, in a wok, add olive oil and tomato paste (this was the hardest part- opening the cans without a can opener, but Chris plenty amused himself by slicing the top with a cleaver), let it simmer for a bit and Prego!
Oooooh it was delicious! Maybe it was the deprivation, but damn Chris and I are good cooks! We furthered our celebration with three episodes of Season 2 30ROCK and finished off the overpriced bottle of Australian Cabernet Shiraz blend I bought at the imported wine shop.
And for dessert, Snickers Pie
Chris says “you’re supposed to feel fat and gross otherwise it was a bad Thanksgiving.” So. Well done, China. I had a good Thanksgiving.
Well! Happy Thanksgiving…sorry, terrible lurker. I am just across the “river”? in the country of Japan…but I really enjoy reading your adventures in China. I just couldn’t imagine…I guess in a way I’m lucky that JP has pretty much all the foul, western necessities..though we did not find a turkey nor celebrate it this year either! Anyways…just sayin…
Don’t forget about Adam Sandler’s Thanksgiving song. You could teach them all sorts of gobble gobble strange rhymes.
[...] our feast last year, Chris and I stayed in and attempted a home-made spaghetti sauce, which sort of worked. This year, Robert and Annie joined us at our beloved hot pot restaurant for [...]