There wasn’t a football game on TV, nor was there pumpkin pie or even turkey, but this Thanksgiving goes down in the books as one of my best ever. Just like our Puritan predecessors, we Americans celebrated surviving a season in strange new land, with lots of help from people we call Indians. On the brink of my departure from India, it was great to have an excuse to think about the things I’m grateful for and be with people I love.
I’m not sure if turkeys exist in India, so we decided to go with an equally American classic - mac n’ cheese - for our centerpiece dish. We coughed up some rupees for good (and, in India, very rare) farm cheese, and it was really worth it. Mashed potatoes were, of course, on the menu. We rounded out the meal with sweet potatoes, several varieties of roasted vegetables and cabbage salad. And what’s Thanksgiving without dessert? Luckily, the best apple in the world is baked right in Varanasi (who would have guessed?). Add in vanilla ice cream, chocolate cake, homemade peanut butter cookies and chocolates, and we had ourselves quite the feast.
We spent the afternoon cooking. After so many months, it felt great to be back in a kitchen again - peeling and chopping vegetables, sauteing and frying and mashing. Even washing dishes was pretty fun. Guests starting arriving around 7pm - professor Nawal Krishna, Australian friend Michelle, American friend Daniella, Nandini Majumdar and Ankur and Anupriya, children of the gatekeeper here at Nirman - and at 8 we all ate a lovely, gigantic, candlelit meal together. We told our friends about Thanksgiving and went around in a circle to say the things we were thankful for. Even in India, some things are so familiar - that comfy, overstuffed feeling of a bellyful of mashed potatoes and the happiness that comes from sharing a big meal with people you care about.
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| Katie in the kitchen. |
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| CHEESE. |
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| Dinner by candlelight. |
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| Mac n' cheese - the star of the show. |
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| My delicious dinner. |
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