Happy Thanksgiving! From My Country to Yours!

I love Thanksgiving. 

I love everything about it; the fall season, the baking (pumpkin EVERYTHING), the food & time spent with family. All of which made it that much harder to be away from home and family for the holiday. Nothing says homesick like talking to your family through a computer as they're all gathered around the table after what can only be assumed to be was a delicious meal with lots of laughs. I know, it's sad but I'll stop with the sad part now.
My home-away-from-home Thanksgiving was actually pretty nice. A group of us Canadian international students went out of our way to let just about all of Glasgow know that it was Thanksgiving for us and we were celebrating.
Sunday night we were going to sit down and have a big family style feast (every student for themselves, unless you wanted to bring a communal dish), so Sunday we trekked to Tesco (supermarket) to get the goods. I myself was set on having pumpkin pie and assumed others would be just as excited so I found all the stuff I needed! Yea... Canned pumpkin here...not cheap, but so worth it. And champagne of course. I ended up having to run back out again and purchase some necessary spices I had missed but all part of the adventure in the end.
I also kicked a pigeon on the way back - now before anyone goes all 'save the wildlife' on me you should know that the pigeons here are so lazy, they are everywhere. Half of the time they will walk right up to you if you are sitting and have food or something shiny. This one just happened to be walking right in front of me as I was walking - he went to move out of the way, I took a step, he started to open his wings as my right foot just kind of swooped under. He was fine. I kicked a pigeon.

Now baking is not always an easy and usually requires some relatively accurate measurements, but when you seriously lack baking tools and measuring objects in general you do the best with what you've got. So I followed the instructions on the side of the pumpkin can and started mixing up my pie filling in my pot (my makeshift mixing bowl). I couldn't for the life of me determine how much of a can  of evaporated milk 1/2 pint was so I eyeballed it as I poured and threw in a pile of sugar (thanks to google conversions) and some spices. Put the filling in the shells and 45 minutes later at 220 degrees I had two gorgeous homemade pumpkin pies ready to go for dinner and you know what? They were delicious and a huge hit! I was pretty impressed with myself after being on a baking craze before I left and then just not being able to for the past month.

This is my pie! There were 2, the other one got eaten fast. It's darker than
usual but it was very good.

So we had a nice dinner, Alex and I had some store bought turkey and instant mashed potatoes (just add boiling water) and Alex made a delightful green bean casserole and gravy. Lauren (also from Brock) had found and cranberry sauce and shared that as well as gluten free stuffing. We had great dinner conversation and explain Thanksgiving to our Finnish and Swedish friends.
Today despite being a Holiday in Canada... was not here. It was not the greatest day in my existence but you can't have a few good days without some bad ones too.



Anywho, hope you have enjoyed reading about my makeshift Thanksgiving. I hope yours was good and filled with lots of turkey, friends & family!
Tomorrow I am off on a hike in the highlands with my friend Kayla so I shall post about that later!

Peace out girl scout!
T.