Angelika The American Thanksgiving is an extremely pleasant holiday for us because we have no obligations or customs to follow. Instead, we can simply enjoy the days off that the holiday at the end of November gives us (Rundbrief 11/2001). Thanksgiving is really a big deal in the USA. Everyone visits family, so car and air traffic is heavier than at Christmas.
This year, we actually decided to take on the task of preparing the traditional turkey dinner. However, since I neither knew how to properly cook such a bird nor had the necessary roasting pan or wanted to spend the whole day in the kitchen, I resorted to an extremely practical solution in this country, where the customer is often still king. Many of the large supermarkets or delicatessen stores offer fully cooked holiday meals with all the trimmings. The meal just needs to be reheated at home. So, I ordered the feast online from our upscale organic supermarket "Whole Foods" and picked it up on Thanksgiving morning.
Everything was super organized. I didn't even have to go into the store; instead, I could pick up my pre-packed package from a trailer parked in the supermarket's parking lot. The package included a fully cooked organic turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, rolls, and for dessert, pumpkin pie, along with instructions on how to properly reheat the food. The turkey actually took a full two hours to warm up again. Everything tasted excellent, and the bird was surprisingly juicy and not dry at all. Cheers to American pragmatism.