Turkey Day from Far Away

Since I'm not in the US, Thanksgiving was not a day off for me. I had classes and other things to do. Luckily, since I don't have classes on Fridays, I could put off some of it. I watched Babylon 5, did some shopping, thought about my homework, and worked on my plans for our group Thanksgiving here (which took place Friday night).
     Thursday night, however, I got some snacks to tide me over while I waited to Skype my family and eat some of the things from my Thanksgiving box with them. I even made egg nog from scratch, having purchased the necessary equipment I didn't have at the dorm (i.e. a big bowl, a whisk, ingredients).

Here's my Thanksgiving dinner of champions: egg nog, canned turkey breast, loaded mashed potatoes, and chocolate marshmallow cookies from my gramma. I didn't want to eat everything in the box (and I'm not sure I could have in one sitting, but hey, isn't that the Thanksgiving challenge?), that way I could share it with my friends during our dinner Friday night.
Due to some technical difficulties, my chat with my parents ceased. But on the upside, I got to Skype with my second family in Washington, though technical difficulties ended that fairly quickly as well, though they did get to see my neon green walls.
We started Thanksgiving cooking on Friday early afternoon. Since everything I was bringing was dehydrated, adding water isn't difficult and doesn't take long. I was helping Anna and Jordan make pies from scratch. We made five in total, two pecan, one lemon meringue, one chocolate silk, and one apple. They all turned out really well, though the pecan did end up a bit burned, and the silk wasn't quite solid. Despite that, they tasted great.

A bit of the huge mess we made. Anna's got serious egg white whipping skills. Should make egg nog a lot easier to make if I can master her epicness. She christened the top of our apple pie with a Zorro style Z.

Pie on the window sill, story book grandma style.

All our pies.

I tried to get a picture of a slice of each of the pies, but with all the rotations, I ate much of it before I got the chance, but I did get a picture of all the pies sliced.

I rehydrated the sweet potato soufflé and the green bean casserole. Both went over really well and several people asked for the recipes. 

Here's all of us, surrounded by our Thanksgiving-worthy amount of food. Pies, soufflé, casserole, Estonian style mashed potatoes, mini pizzas, sliced veggies, ham and onions, sushi, and more that I'm not remembering right now. Everyone left appropriately stuffed for the holiday. Our lovely crew consisted of Germans, Americans, a Pole, an Italian, a Latvian, a Czech, a Georgian, a Hungarian, and an Ukrainian. After dinner, we spent hours playing Mafia, learning all sorts of different rules for the game around the world. And more than a few Italian Mob jokes were made. 

Several of us walked some of our meal off in the wee hours of the morning, strolling through Tartu's parks in the 15˚ air. While I may not have been home for Thanksgiving, this was certainly an evening worthy of the holiday with plenty food, friends, and good times.