Flamenco, Fiesta, Siesta: A Spanish Adventure: Jerez and Thanksgiving, part 1

Hey everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!! It's a little bit weird, because Thanksgiving is just any other day here, but we're doing our best to celebrate :)

Tuesday night I drove to Jerez de la Frontera (about an hour away) with Ignacio to go to a Rotary-Jerez meeting. It was a special meeting and served sort of as a Rotary recruitment-information session. There were a lot of Rotarians, but also non-Rotarians who were there to learn a little about what Rotary does. I met people from all over the Jerez-Cádiz area. The meeting was held in the center of Jerez at a place called Casino Jerezano. From what I understand, "Casinos" are essentially country clubs or social clubs...you have to be a member to get in. Historically I think they were just for men. The Casino Jerezano is in this old house in Jerez that used to belong to a family in the wine business (Jerez is famous for its sherry and bodegas). It was a beautiful building with this huge covered patio in the middle. They also had some of the best food I've eaten since I've been in Spain.

Last night I had Thanksgiving, part 1 over at Andy's apartment. The three American cooks were Andy, our friend Janet, and me. We cooked a semi-traditional Thanksgiving meal for some of our Spanish friends :) It consisted of grilled chicken (no turkey, no oven), broccoli, corn, green bean casserole, and mashed potatoes and gravy. We closed out the meal with a sweet potato pie that I baked that morning. I am now going to take a detour into a narrative of my trials and tribulations baking this pie, then return to describing the rest of the night :)

Now, I love to bake and cook, but my options of what to make were limited by 1) ingredient availability and 2) oven size. Since pumpkin pie doesn't exist here, I went for sweet potatoes. I will preface by saying I have never in my life baked nor eaten a sweet potato pie, let alone with the limitations imposed by Spain. First task: make a crust. I mashed up some cookies into bread crumbs and mixed them with some melted butter to make a crust. First mistake: I accidentally used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon to measure my butter. Needless to say, the texture was a bit off. I think the cookies themselves ended up being buttery enough that they compensated. Second problem: for some unknown reason my microwave almost exploded while I was melting said butter. No, it wasn't in a metal container. The accident was inexplicable, but regardless, there is now a sticky note that says "PELIGRO" (Danger) on our microwave. Fortunately, the microwave was not necessary for the rest of the recipe. The next big step was peeling and steaming the sweet potatoes. Well, as many will tell you, I'm not great with knives, and we do not own a peeler, so I was very afraid to peel potatoes by hand. With the exception of one close call, I did fine. However, this was the exact moment when the guy who was coming over to fix our phone decided to show up. Me, surrounded by potato peel with stuff all over the kitchen, in a very frazzled state. I don't think I really spoke to him, I just nodded a lot, but he did tell me that it smelled good! I had to be a bit of a Macgyver to set up a potato steaming apparatus, but I did alright. Next obstacle: no mixer. This just meant that I got a good upper body work out while baking :) After a lot of arm work and a few more minor substitutions, I got the pie on a cookie sheet only to realize that both pie and cookie sheet would not fit into the oven. So much for the recipe, I discarded the cookie sheet and popped the pie in. Now, what I like about cooking as opposed to baking is that you can taste things as you go along, that way you have an idea of what it will taste like at the end. Not so with baking. I pulled that pie out of the oven and prayed that it would taste ok that night. To my great relief, it did. Whew. Mission accomplished.

The dinner was a major success. Andy told the "Thanksgiving story" of the pilgrims and Indians before we started to ate and we all took a moment to say our "I'm thankful for..."s. It was very nice. By the end of the night we were all sprawled out on couches and Andy said, "This is Thanksgiving." Yep.

Today I had a busy day of research and class (on Thanksgiving! Crazy right?) but tonight I have another Thanksgiving dinner to go to! This time with my friend Julia and a few other Americans. I'm sure it will be equally as great. I hope everyone back home is having a great time with family and friends! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Here are some pictures from dinner last night...enjoy!