A Very Ex-Pat Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving came late this year.  Not that there was much choice in the matter.  With Thanksgiving being a particularly American holiday, there is no reprieve from work duties on the third Thursday and Friday of November.  Instead, I joined up with Alex and Michelle, a couple of other American ex-patriots living in Vienna, and had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast.  Alex was the main cook with dishes including turkey (2 small ones as the ovens here are much smaller than those in the US), turkey confit, homemade gravy, brussel sprouts with bacon, mushroom bread pudding, mashed potatoes with blue cheese, and mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows.

The spread.  I hope there's enough!

I provided the closest approximation to a stuffing that I could muster together with the ingredients available here.  It turned out pretty good, but the sweet Italian sausage the recipe called for does not exist in Austria and was replaced by Extrawurst (similar to bologna).

My Austrian stuffing.

The only typical Thanksgiving dish conspicuously missing was the pumpkin pie.  But in its place were a handful of desserts that gave the meal a more international feel.  There was a marvelous, moist apple cake with sour cream and two New Zealand dishes: pavlova and lollicake.  The pavlova is similar to a meringue but mostly just sugar and egg whites whipped and then baked.  I couldn't even start to describe what's in the lollicake (not lollipops), but it certainly was delicious!

The desserts: apple cake (top), lollicake (right), and pavlova covered with whipped cream and kiwifruit (bottom).

The food was absolutely incredible and was only matched by the company.  With Alex, Michelle, and I the only Americans present, we also had representatives from England, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, New Zealand, and even a token Austrian.  Good times were had by all and this certainly was a wonderful stand-in for my typical family Thanksgiving tradition.  Happy Thanksgiving!