Mary's Dinner Club Stories - Thanksgiving 2011

by Mary Anglberger - I am Austrian - got here last August (on my own, am not married, have no children) to change professionally after almost 20 years of travelling the globe, teaching English.

My Dinner Clubs have really become the highlight of my week - I love planning/shopping/trying things out during the week and I always look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

It was all singles for the festive Thanksgiving meal as we had life coach Carol Page http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1102313755&sk=info giving a short intro of her upcoming workshop ‘Self Awareness for singles – 10 steps to finding love’.  The place was decorated in ‘nature’ with various pretty local fruits and nuts, leaves, candles…

As with so many things in life, we found out that having a positive attitude is a main ‘pre-requisite’, along with knowing what you want, ‘clearing your baggage’….. basically we had food for thought before we had food for the stomach. Very interesting - several guest plan to attend Carol’s full workshop in January.

We were joined by a married couple for the ‘food part’ only at 8:30, got a bit more info on Thanksgiving, a very popular and important holiday in the States, and started off with hot cheese puffs and green beans which disappeared among many ‘ooohs’ and ‘hmmms’.

As so often at my dinners, these small delights were a first for me and I must say I was quite pleased with them – pretty, not too difficult and fun to make, very tasty and light…. I’d like to emphasize once more at this point, that I am a true ‘hobby chef’. I enjoy cooking immensely mostly because of the learning, discovery and creativity aspects to it. Here to, like with many things in life, I guess doing it with love and enjoyment makes it successful. Probably a bit of common sense does not hurt the matter either. Finally I must admit, that I am quite ‘creative’ or rather ‘disobedient’ when it comes to following the recipes I look up. Sometimes I am surprised myself at how wonderfully things usually do turn out in the end – I guess where the ‘luck’ factor comes in ;)

The main course – chicken in gravy with and stuffing made with celery, walnuts, apples, cranberries were perfect examples of this. I changed some of the ingredients to what ‘seemed to make more sense’ like a really tangy kind of apples and more dark bread than white bread for the stuffing and doing some ‘magic’ on the chicken that was to be our turkey. Served with sweet potatoes and collard greens sautéed with lots of garlic, the course went down a treat and got a ‘11 out of 10’ by one guest.

During the next little break there was of course more very animated discussion about the joys (and ‘troubles’) of single life - really interesting as we got the perspectives of various nationalities. Lots of laughter until it was time to draw new numbers for a new seat.

For dessert we had the only possible option at a Thanksgiving meal: pumpkin pie. Here too, it was my first time to make it with fresh pumpkin (in the States you just get it in cans) and I did find locally produced spices like all spice and cloves to be much stronger here than elsewhere but in the end….a delight! And I don’ think anyone minded me having replaced the heavy cream the recipe asked for  with condensed milk (the chef taking creative license). Even though we did go out to dance off some of those calories.

All in all, another very successful, pleasant evening – thanks to all the great guest for making it happen! I am already looking forward to next Saturday's 'repeat' of a French-themed dinner that will feature onion soup, coq au vin and tart tartin and welcome a 'guest singer': Jazz singer Sarah Fenwick treating us to a brief talk on her long experience with this genre of music here on the island and of course.... a French tune. Be sure to contact Mary's Dinner Clubs Limassol on facebook or maryanglbe@hotmail.com soon as this promises to be another popular one.

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