Halfway down the Danube

Thanksigiving Dinner

Turkey, that's American. Cranberry sauce, that's very American -- I don't know anyone else who eats cranberry sauce. But Claudia made it as a sort of relish with currants, and our guests (Romanians and Germans) seemed to like it just fine.

The wine -- there was a lot of wine -- was mixed, Romanian reds and a sweet Serbian white and good old Montenegrin Vranac. When we lived in Belgrade we drank a lot of Vranac. It's not great wine, it's not even very good wine, but it's extremely okay wine, if you get what I mean. We drank all but our last bottle.

Then we had some Palinka. That's a Romanian plum brandy. Home-made, poured out of a soda bottle into little thick glasses. It doesn't go down easy, at least not for me. But once it hits your stomach it makes itself at home, if you know what I mean.

(Oh, and Miller Genuine Draft. This is a horrible American beer; one American guest brought a few bottles as a joke. But the Romanians drank it and claimed to like it. Afterwards Claudia said they were kidding. Maybe.)

Mashed potatoes, those aren't particularly American or anything else -- everyone eats mashed potatoes. But the next day, Claudia used the leftovers to make a sort of_kartoffelpuffen_, potato pancake thingies, very German. And very tasty.

And gravy, of course. Germans do gravy too, but the Romanians don't seem to much. ("It's like a sauce made from meat. And then you pour it over, um, more meat.") Same thing with stuffing; Germans do it, Romanians not. Which seems a little odd; if you have chickens, surely...? But it was good stuffing, bread-celery-apple-chestnut with sage. Everybody had seconds.

(Have we ever mentioned our spice rack here? No? Well, as a wedding present, our friend James gave us sixty jars of spices. Common ones like cinnamon and parsley, less common ones like sage and turmeric and mace, strange ones like asafoetida. The spice rack got a good workout yesterday.)

Corn. Sauteed mushrooms with onions. Salad. Rolls. Apple pie, chocolate cake.

Guests arrived at five, we started eating around 6:30, the last bit of wine was drunk around midnight.

I didn't marry her for her cooking, by the way. But I could have.

Posted by douglas at November 28, 2003 08:28 PM