Of course I am a few days late with this post but to be fair I am still stuffing myself with plenty of leftovers and therefore, still in Thanksgiving-mode.

While it was hard to not be at home on Thanksgiving for my first time ever, we hosted a delicious feast for 25ish of our friends last Saturday which, I have to say, was a complete success. I spent the last few weeks gathering and sourcing all of the ingredients that I would need so we had all of the traditional favorites (although, since only 2 of our guests were American, no one would have known the difference)

– turkey (crown, not a full bird) with gravy
– mashed potatoes
– sweet potatoes
– green bean casserole
– cornbread stuffing with apples
– homemade cranberry sauce
– homemade pumpkin pie (with homemade crust)

– additional appetizers and desserts from friends

The biggest challenge was dealing with our convection oven – apparently these are supposed to cook faster and more evenly but it takes literally 2-3x as long to cook anything (plus it’s in Celsius…) I had one in my school apartment in New York and could never get it to cook properly either, so I’m really not sure what the big deal is and I am not a fan.

But anyway – some friends came over the day before to help with the pies and miscellaneous chopping, which was a big help! I also finally bought a microwave last week so that was great for some last minute reheating. None of my international friends had ever eaten a proper thanksgiving so they were all impressed and I was so happy to share our most delicious holiday with them!

My thanksgiving options at Tesco…no thanks

(After my grocery delivery arrived with the turkey!)

Party prep

Took me a LONG time to make sure the turkey was done! Dumb oven.

Plus so many pies.

Happy friends

Happy hostess

Some more beautiful things…

GSA shop at Christmas

Reid lobby at Christmas

George Square at Christmas

Happy plants

Ceilidh fundraiser at school last night

Tea and frangipane for studio

Next week is the last full week of the term so this week = paper writing + presentation prep + hopefully some Christmassy things