November 22

It’s another Thanksgiving in China.

We’ve got two pumpkin pies with streusel on top, one just out of the oven. There’s a box of Stovetop sitting on the counter just waiting for its butter and water. And I can hear Shi-wen peeling the four potatoes which will be boiled and mashed and subjected to copious amounts of gravy.

This year our turkey came roasted in slices from a shop that sells sandwiches and salads and other things western. Admittedly this is not quite as dramatic as roasting our own bird but it'll do. Especially with gravy on top.  

The only necessity we couldn’t find was the can of Durkee onions that would have allowed the guilty pleasure of a French onion casserole. Despite being very hopeful, and going to several stores where western stuff is sold, Shi-wen was told that the places that once had the onions were now sold out. And the places that never had them, still didn’t have them. So no French onion casserole for us.

A missing casserole is admittedly a small thing in a big picture with lots of be thankful for. This is the middle of southwestern China after all. There’s no Cool Whip either and we’ll survive that too.

And while China won’t allow us our Durkee onions or our Cool Whip, it has nudged us towards being grateful for things that folks back home aren’t likely thinking of today.

 I’m thankful my pants have bottoms.

I’m thankful my favorite sofa is here for napping.

I’m thankful for the supermarkets and butchers who prepare meat the way I recognize it.

And I’m thankful I haven’t fallen in a manhole.

All this is to say, I’m thankful for the way my worldview changes each time my home does. Admittedly, gratitude is not the first emotion that wells up when I’m avoiding the open manholes and the no-bottomed pants, but you get there eventually.

Happy Thanksgiving Chengdu. 

that last thursday in november

Thanksgiving is a smell. It’s a turkey warmth that creeps out from the kitchen, wanders through the dining room and then drifts up the stairs. It transforms a Thursday afternoon into something more and in our experience it works everywhere. Even in China. Although in China the “American Turkey” that's key to the whole transformation is going to cost you. Something in the neighborhood of $50 for a 14 pounder.

We may have been the only ones on our block watching a turkey transform into a celebration, and our Stovetop stuffing may have come with us in our suitcases back in July, but the day still felt special. It’s also hard to value your family more than when you are so far away that wishing them a Happy Thanksgiving means calling the next day. When I called Chicago the festivities were just beginning, whereas our toasts made in Chengdu to happiness and health, to our adventures and our comforts, and to our families and our friends, were long gone.

So much focus on luck and good fortune ran head-long into my Chinese teacher’s descriptions of growing up in 1960’s China. The country had nothing to eat. Food became anything a body could tolerate so she’d bulked out a haphazard diet with the grasses and leaves her mother had taught her were safe. Today’s most basic foodstuffs were so scarce that kids had raced each other for a single wild strawberry – tiny as a fingernail and cheery red – that popped to life in the schoolyard.

She says today’s young people don’t understand what it was like here before. And we both know that I don’t either. It’s been a while since gaunt figures walking along the side of the road coming to a stop, collapsing, and never getting up was considered run-of-the-mill. Thankfully.

I'm accustomed to focusing on the goodnesses I have collected along my way… the small lucks and big loves that define good fortune. But a glimpse into the list of unfairnesses that have thrashed other people’s lives makes me doubly appreciate my own normal.

I know that’s what everyone says. But we say it because it’s true.

eating in beijing

There's something you should know about China.

It's probably going to sound obvious but I consider the following piece of information to be incredibly important.

Chinese food is better in China.

When I say Chinese food is better in China, I don't mean it in that way that Thai food is better in Thailand. Of course Thai food is better in Thailand, but I've also had some respectable Thai food from a storefront restaurant in my old Chicago neighborhod.

But the food we feasted on in Beijing? Not a single meal failed to surprise us in the best ways. We had plates that were light and fresh. Nuanced and complex. Most were steaming, all were delicately seasoned, and none left us starving an hour later. I've never tasted anything like it from a white take-out container.

Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of Peking duck with its luxurious crisped skin, savory sauces, thinly sliced vegetables, coarse sugar that we'd all assumed was salt, and thin pancakes to hold it all gently together. I assure you that no one missed the turkey.



Each morning we would walk around the corner from our hotel and visit a small restaurant run by two young sisters. Each time we came in, the sister with the crimped hair would be snoozing at one of the tables, her head cradled in the crook of her own arm. The other sister would be standing directly under the TV that hung in the corner, staring at whatever drama was playing that morning.

The food that the two sisters would alternately bring to our table was homey and filling. The dumplings were made in a small nook of space near the cashier which was closed in by a wall and the windows, and when the chef finished crafting his savory and wonderful packages of vegetables, or fish, or pork... he would have to leave that space and then leave the restaurant.

He would step out of the front door, turn left, and then walk down the sidewalk past the restaurant's windows. Presumably he would enter a separate door that led to the kitchen. Luckily he could use a small sliding window joining the kitchen and the restaurant to deliver any soup we had ordered. He would pass the bowl through to one of the sisters, its steam leaving a trail.



One afternoon we shared a never-ending lunch best compared to watching a clown car unload. The energetic game of charades we'd played with the waitress to place our order had gone well enough and soon after she left, food started to appear.

And then more food showed up. And then a little more. No one in our party was sure it would ever stop and on several occasions when we thought that it had stopped, we were corrected by the appearance of yet another delicious entrée landing on our table.



We had no real complaints because the food was varied, delicious and dirt cheap. Vegetables were combined with complex sauces but remained light and fresh. Other dishes had a caramelized richness that added flavor but managed not to weigh down the ingredients. There were fish dumplings with coriander, and other dumplings fluffy with the combination of egg and tomato.

We also wandered down a hutong for our second taste of peking duck. The duck was not as delicate as it had been in our first meal but the surroundings were as if we'd plunked ourselves down in someone's back room. The tables were mismatched, the ducks were hanging next to my Mom, and the owner was swatting flies throughout the meal.



Lively surroundings are the accompaniments that make good meals great and China is all about the surroundings. There are people yelling, chomping, and chop-sticking. There are teapots, bicycles, and small pitchers filled with vinegar. You sit on different chairs, you eat from different plates, and the food is - no doubt - better for it.

I don't know what I expected from the food in China, but I know what I'll expect from now on.

a milano thanksgiving

It happened over dinner at our friends' house last month. They were asking us about Thanksgiving - they're Italian - and we were gushing about how it's just like you see in the movies. A giant turkey. Pumpkin pie. All the family around. And that's when we decided we had to have a "finta" Thanksgiving, a fake Thanksgiving, to show them what it's like.

We were lucky that we had the chance to do some American shopping on our trip home for Thanksgiving. On the return flight to Milan we must have dragged back an entire suitcase devoted to Thanksgiving mandatories: a can of jellied cranberries, two boxes of Stove Top, Durkee onions, jars of gravy, canned pumpkin... There's nothing like a suitcase full of food unavailable in Italy to remind you that Thanksgiving only happens in America.

The turkey, however, wasn't something we could bring back from the States. And so Stefano had to find one here.

You can find truffles and panettone and Parmagiano Reggiano and a million kinds of wine, but Italy is not the place you want to be when it's time to find a turkey. Why? Because they don't come easy and they don't come cheap.

Stefano special-ordered a fresh turkey from the butcher (there's no such thing as Butterball here) and when we picked it up at the butcher shop the guy basically held it up by one leg, random feathers fluttering onto the counter, and asked if it was ok. It was heavier than we'd ordered and at 7.90 euro/kilo that makes a difference. But it was also the only one they had. Which meant that it was fine.



As we walked home with this giant, soft bird body it looked like Stefano was carrying around a swaddled child. At 14 pounds it was a respectable Thanksgiving turkey by American standards. But apparently, by Italian standards, a 14-lb-anything is gigantic. So large and hulking, in fact, that there was no hope of fitting it in our oven.

So on the day of fake Thanksgiving, Stefano spent a fair amount of time shuttling between the kitchen of our friend (and neighbor) with her gloriously gigantic American oven and our apartment with its petite Easy Bake version. Big thanks to our friend and her oven because without them our dramatic golden bird would have been more McNugget sized.

Our oven focused on the green bean casserole and the mac and cheese. But before you get the idea that our oven was configured to bake both of these at the same time I should say that we had to jerry-rig an additional oven shelf with a cooling rack. As in, we laid a cooling rack across the baking pan of mac and cheese, and balanced the green bean casserole on top of it. Because our oven only comes with one shelf. That's why Stefano had to bake each of his two homemade pumpkin pies one at a time.



Everyone enjoyed the meal and we were happy to see the Italians and Americans alike going back for seconds. We kept our Stove Top secret when complimented on the deliciousness of our stuffing, and Stefano was pleased when one of the guests said the pumpkin pie was one of the best he'd ever had. In fact, the entire meal was beyond excellent, and thanks go to Stefano for a great meal and for the patience to make it in an Italian kitchen.

And let me add one more thanks - for the mounds of leftovers that kept us fed for a week. There's nothing like a fridge full of leftover turkey and stuffing to make a house feel like home.

giving grazie

Thanksgiving is best spent at home. Preferably in your parents' completely redecorated living room that is so ben fatto (well done) that when you walk through the door you don't know where you are. It's best spent with new babies and your sister's new boyfriend, and twenty-pound turkeys that went into the oven hours before a single guest even thought of arriving.

Thanksgiving is a time for green bean casserole. And Jell-o molds. And stuffing that your cousin left at home because now they're traveling with a baby and it's hard to remember everything.

And it goes without saying that thanks are given for our families and our friends. For health, for happiness, and certainly for all managing to get together in one place at the same time.

It's also time to give thanks for all of the little things that we miss about home. Those silly simple things that haunt you when you're far away.



We're thankful for the rediscovery of garlic - a spice Italian food (in America) is known for but which lays surprisingly low in Italian cuisine, at least that of the North. But in Chicago, you can coat sweet, giant shrimp in olive oil and garlic and find yourself in a small slice of savory heaven.



We're thankful for international cuisine. Hours after landing in Chicago, despite the lingering fatigue of a ten hour flight - and the onset of the resulting jet lag - we high-tailed it to the nearest Mexican restaurant. Chips and salsa we missed you! Another night was spent at the Polish restaurant where in addition to hearty potato pancakes and sauerkraut (previously found only in Krakow), we found the second best license plate in the world: BUNS. Could there be a more perfect companion to BTTR LV which we found on a ferry in 2005? (To jog your memory check out my October 2005 blog entries.)



And no matter how hard it's raining - and how many friends you run into by chance even though you didn't tell anyone you were coming home for Thanksgiving - don't forget Thai food. It's the food that we miss most and there's a restaurant on Chicago's north side whose dishes are second only to those served in Thailand. We ordered far more than we could eat but fearlessly ate it all. We know that our next pad thai is a long time coming.



We're thankful for Chicago - the city - with its skyscrapers and shopping and lakeside parks with giant metal beans dropped into the middle of them. With the bean and its smooth curves reflecting and distorting the city so that you just stare at the reflections of the buildings shooting sharply into the sky and think, "There are none of these in Milan." And it's true. There is never that vertical tug, that energy moving up, up, up. I came out of Union Station - the main train station in downtown Chicago - and I got tears in my eyes. Who knew I missed this place so much.



We're thankful for the cold. And not "Milano" cold, but real cold. The kind that comes with snow and bites at your skin and makes you wish you brought your gloves. That cold with a screaming wind that brings snow on Thanksgiving morning and lines the tree branches with thin white stripes. And what about a deer crowned with antlers running across the front yard, grunting out its steamy breath? In Chicago, it's winter and it's cold and that's how November is supposed to feel.



We're thankful for hot dogs and American coffee and breakfast. Those simple things that are so very American. I don't even eat hot dogs and I can appreciate the joy of a Chicago style hot dog with its sloppy piles of chilis and relish and pickle slices. And American coffee in giant cups that waitresses keep filling up whether you ask them to or not. And breakfast... Oh sweet breakfast. Omelets and waffles and pancakes. Everything with butter. And then just one more cup of coffee.



This year's Thanksgiving was special for many reasons. And sitting there together on Thursday, the group of us in one room until nearly midnight, I think we all knew it.

Maybe that's part of what made it so special - the knowledge that we're all so very lucky, and the luxury to enjoy that feeling together.

il tachino senza gambie

Here is Stefano's tachino. A beautiful creature that got along well with herbs and butter. Mmmm. Ci piace!

Indie Thanksgiving

This is our first independent thanksgiving. I know that some people feel constricted by family tradition and despise being trapped in a home with all of their relatives for a day-long eating extravaganza. But for us it was a great pleasure... both the people and the food. And now that we're alone, left to construct our own tradition, some of the warmth and comfort is missing. (And that's not only because our fireplace, without fail, causes the fire alarm to go off so we're left without its holiday services.)

But, and here's our big butt Simone, Stefano has come to the rescue. He is cooking, cooking, cooking. The scents are swirling around our cramped apartment and making us giddy and grateful. Last night he made a homemade pumpkin pie with pecan struesel. It's a Cooking Light recipe so the guilt level is markedly decreased -- although if you check the stats we're actually fooling ourselves on this one.



He's also making a turkey with fresh herbs, butter and roasted vegetables. And it already smells so good. I consider myself lucky to love a man who cooks so wonderfully. But maybe I'd be thinner if he didn't. Ah, so what -- it's fall, the leaves on the ground smell sweet, and there was snow in the air last night. DC ain't great but it's looking nice these days.



Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. It's impossible to express how lucky we are.