Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I trust you had a wonderful holiday! Many people have asked me to tell them what we had for our Thanksgiving dinner...so, I am going to do my best to describe it.
First of all, you may be disappointed to hear that we did not have anything exotic. Exotic happens enough the rest of the time, we decided to change things up and go for as close to normal as possible. :) In that frame of mind, we had to start off by giving up on Turkey (no one here has even heard of a 20 pound bird here)...so, chickens were the next closest thing. Ironically, we even had a hard time buying some of those...but, after much effort, we triumphed. This meant waking up at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, etc. to the lovely choir of competing cock-a doodlers. FUN - especially since their house is right outside our bedroom window!!! Thursday was not possible for us, since school was in session (Thanksgiving is not a holiday here)...so, we had our feast on Saturday! Saturday morning, we had a quick breakfast of cinnamon rolls, then headed out to kill the birds. You would have really enjoyed it. Dad knows how to wing the chicken around in a full circle, and then flick his wrist and snap it's neck. The head comes off in his hand and the headless body flops frantically around on the ground for a few minutes. Caleb and Seth (and Roy, although he would never admit it) all wanted to learn how to do it. SO, our entire family went out... on what was our thanksgiving morning, to cheer, film, and photograph the events as the "menfolk" attempted to "wring" the chickens necks (and first, they had to catch them...). You want to talk about entertainment... You all had a football game, but I can guarantee you that we had more laughs and fun than you did! It was hilarious!
But, back to the food... We then fried up the chicken, then put it into the pressure cooker. If we had not done that, we might as well of had beef jerky... these chickens out here are TOUGH!!! Clare and I had already worked the day before to cook up sweet potatoes - which were then made into sweet potato pie and sweet potato casserole,
homemade oatmeal rolls, and coconut custard pie (using coconut I had previously grated, roasted, and dried). We then put a squash in our solar oven and pulled out some much treasured jars of pickles and olives! I am telling you... we ate like kings! We even had cool whip for our sweet potato pie and our coconut custard pie! Clare got a kick out of our way of making cool whip, so she took a picture.At any rate, I have decided that being thankful really has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you have or don't have. Life is so much simpler, yet harder here... and yet, I find myself being much more thankful. I am grateful for so many things and yet as I mentally list them, I realize that many people in the western world would not even notice them as blessings, and yet so many people here don't even have these things at all. I am thankful for firewood, bandaids, spices, parmesan cheese, powdered milk, sunshine, and the ability to read... just to name a few. I am thankful when I manage to get all of the clothes off the line and folded without getting bitten by any ants, and I am thankful that my children are well (other than the occasional bouts of ringworm). I am grateful to be daily astounded by the beauty and variety of God's creation outside my backdoor, bugs, butterflies, birds, etc. AND, I am grateful for YOU! Thank you so much for your prayers and support... and for caring enough to read the crazy rantings of one woman...taking one day at a time...relying completely on the one true God!
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