Thanksgiving dinner for 50 . . .

John and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the faculty and staff at the college of nursing on Thursday. It was a week long project between buying the birds and preparing the stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy !! We cooked a couple of turkeys ahead of time and only cooked the last one Thursday AM. It was rather trickly to get everything hot at the same time. But we transported everything over from our dorm apartment at 11:30 AM and served a hot and delicious dinner at 12 noon. John had decorated the tables the night before - complete with candles, fall leaves and flowers.

We were able to buy Butterball turkeys at the International Market. Since turkey is not found in Korea and these are imported, each 20 pound turkey cost over $75. We figured we were eating "gold." Most staff and many faculty had never tasted turkey, stuffing or cranberry sauce before. So it was a real treat for them. I used my grandmother's stuffing recipe and it was delicious. The cranberries here are much smaller in size than those in the US and it actually took 3 large packages (about $50 worth) to get the sauce at the right consistency. All the leftovers were scoped up and went to family members and /or colleagues at other sites. One faculty told me there was a big argument at the childcare center where she delivered some turkey for tasting as to which was better with the turkey meat - cranberry sauce or Kimchi. "Kimchi" won, of course.

Kimchi, by the way, is a staple food here in Korea. It is served at every meal. It is basically cabbage and other vegetables that are pickled with garlic, spices and the hottest red pepper sauce we have ever tasted. There is a museum here that displays more than 200 different types of Kimchi. Every family has at least two refrigerators in their home: one for food and one for Kimchi. Kimchi is centuries old and was the primary way of preserving vegetables needed for the long cold Korean winters. It is just as popular today as long ago. Red pepper sauce is everywhere in everything. In the paper last week, there was a recipe for "stuffing." They suggested that one use a "big chicken" and stuff with bread crumbs, sausage, butter, garlic, peanuts, broth and the ever present "Korean red hot pepper paste."

Our Thanksgiving dinner was a great success. Hope yours was too.