Thanksgiving in San Jose, Costa Rica

It’s always more fun to celebrate Thanksgiving with other people than by yourself. This year, Jonathan and I decided that we would invite Kattya and Ricardo over for Thanksgiving dinner.

They couldn’t make it on Thursday night, so we had Thanksgiving on Friday instead.

One thing about traveling is that you have to be flexible with what you can and can’t find in a grocery store. Our menu was a bit different than “normal”.

We had a roasted chicken (We couldn’t find turkey anywhere, so Jonathan roasted a chicken), mashed potatoes (made by Jonathan – and they were absolutely fabulous), green bean casserole (which I made from scratch with fresh green beans and a béchamel sauce, and canned mushrooms since I have yet to see any raw mushrooms in any grocery store), stuffing (again made from scratch with what I was able to find in the store), and an apple pie.

It might sound pretty traditional to you, except that there wasn’t a turkey. But, remember we’re not at our home, so everything has to be made with what we have at hand.

This means that the pie and green bean casserole were made in cooking pots, and that I used a water bottle as a rolling pin. Have you ever had to use a plastic bottle as a rolling pin? It works, but it’s not easy.

And my very favorite parts of Thanksgiving meal were unavailable: cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. The rest of it is good, but without the cranberries, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, it’s just dinner…not Thanksgiving dinner.

When Kattya and Ricardo arrived, we learned that it was Ricardo’s first Thanksgiving. We were very happy to get to celebrate with him.

Anyway, it was really fun. And the plus side to not being able to find turkey is that the whole meal took under 2 hours to prepare and cook. Not bad.

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