Saturday, November 29, 2008

A Thanksgiving Feast

Ciao everyone, and buongiorno from Roma. I say that just because I am running out of instances to do so. It's insane to think that if I leave here on the 15th (which as of right now is my plan . . . need to hammer this out soon), I have just about 16 days left here. I have been here now 102 days, and Thanksgiving was my 100th, I guess. But 16 days? After 102 down? Man, that ain't much time left to take it all in!

Thanksgiving was on Thursday, and I must say, it was excellent to speak to those of you I was able to that night / afternoon, depending on which time zone you choose. I really wish I could've been there with everyone at the new house, but in just 24 days I'll be back, I think you all can probably wait a little longer. I had an excellent time around here that evening, and all afternoon we just listened to Christmas music, made food, and just had a good time. Some people made stuffing and Pumpkin Pie from scratch, and the smells were undeniably the smells of the seasons. I am so glad we could have something along those lines, as a Thanksgiving without it would have been strange.

Around 7:45, I finished my 3 pounds of pasta, covered it all up, and wandered down to the courtyard for our feast, complete with a huge table decorated with awesome Thanksgiving gear, plenty of wine, and of course, a huge feast worth of food. There were so many different dishes and types of potatoes, salad, dips, and pasta that when I went back for seconds (along with everyone else) we all had to take more than we could eat, since there was way too much to eat that evening, but we had to at least make a valiant effort.

All in all, it was around 18 people, most of whom I knew before the event. I gave the initial toast before the meal, which everyone had some wine to, we turned grace in an incredibly civilized fashion, and dug in to the enormous stores of food that had amassed on the table running parallel to the dining table.

Now, our Thanksgiving had a buffet-style set-up, with enough food to feed the Vatican, let alone us. I got the following, which some of can be seen on the table in the following picture:

*A scoop of Carbonara (made be me)
*A scoop of Garlic Prosciutto and Cream pasta (another Craig specialty)
*A twice-baked potato
*Mashed potatoes
*A Rosetta roll
*Turkey salad
*Candied potatoes (funny story there: Cara, one of the organizers of this lovely event, thought she'd bought sweet potatoes when in fact she had bought regular ones. Alas, the language barrier strikes again. So we made them anyway, and they were pretty good)
*Some seven-layer dip
*Green beans with bacon
*And lots of Parmiggiano to top it off.

Yum.

About 15 minutes into dinner, we brought fork to glass and had some thanks turned while we finished up our seconds portion. Cara started it off in her family's style (which is a lot like many peoples, including my own, which was nice) and turned thanks in a serious manner. I was one of the first to go, and I recited a thanks similar to the one I turned on here, and you all were mentioned, no doubt. We all made our rounds and said our thanks, and continued on with the feasting with dessert, which was so superfluous as I'd already eaten so much, but it HAD to be the best part . . . ain't that the way of it?

That's not to say I didn't eat any. I did. I had two slices of chocolate and lemon cake, 4 cookies, some pie, and a bit of gelato. Times were good. Everyone had a lot of wine and was so happy, and Tyler (who I'll get to more in a minute), who lives next door, dressed like a trashy Italian guy you see at every club, bar, or really bus stop in the city. It was hysterical, and tons of pictures were taken, and will be posted in greater fashion later. Needless to say, it was quite the time.

After all the feasting, there were many thanks and turning in early, as the food coma had set in. I crashed out, got up the next morning, and just alternated between working and doing nothing all day. Quite a nice change from two weekends ago where all I did was work.

But today is more of yesterday, with work and rest. I am a bit congested, have been for a few days, but feeling pretty good otherwise. I am more than half done with my last paper, and after that, it's just finals. What a notion.

Tomorrow, Tyler, Phil, and I are going to a Virtus Roma game. If you don't know, this is Rome's professional basketball team, complete with Brandon Jennings (top pro prospect for the next draft) and up until 2 months ago, Shawn Kemp. He no longer plays for Virtus, however, as he was out of shape and too lazy, which any Portland fan could've told you a thousand times over. But it should be fun, a nice break from the studying, anyway.

Until next time, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and more to come soon,

Ciao.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow that sounds like a whole lot of food but also lots of fun! Can't wait until you are back on this side of the planet and we hope to get down to see you over Christmas some time