This was our 4th Thanksgiving while living in England. As the Thursday is just a normal day here – Chris had to work and the kids had school – we celebrate on the following Saturday. Our meat also isn’t from the grocery store, as the Christmas turkeys aren’t out yet . . . or big enough. We had to order our turkey from the butcher and pick it up the day before we celebrated. Our first year’s turkey was a big surprise as we had to chop some body parts off ourselves and finish plucking the feathers.
Visiting the Butchers
We’re getting better and better each year with making it feel like a true Thanksgiving, without the Macy’s Day Parade or football bowl games. Even though we don’t have family around, we have great friends that always accept our invitation to come eat a great meal with us. This year we had our neighbors and a couple families from our ward. We were having such a great time, I forgot to even get a picture of our group.
The Cooked Turkey
The Savory Spread
Another great tradition that some of our American friends have started here, is a Pie Night. The theory is that you are always so full after your Thanksgiving meal, that you can’t fully enjoy the pie. So, you have a Pie Night where you sample all the pies, rather than main dishes. I enjoy it so much, that I think we’ll have to try to keep up the tradition even when we don’t live here. This year the attendance topped out at about 70 people so our venue had to move from someone’s home to the church building. It was a still a great night with lots of yummy treats!
We have so much to be grateful for, and I am always so happy to turn my thoughts to gratitude as we near the Holiday Season. There is no greater event to be more grateful for than the birth of the Savior.
So just how big was that turkey? We get our 10 kilo bird every year online from Sainsburys. It took me a year to figure out that I could order a normal bird online instead of one with interesting body parts and feathers from a local butcher! 😉