Thanksgiving with a feast of acronyms.

Some of the Senior missionaries (SM's) decided that it would be a good idea for as many of the SM's as possible to get together for a Real American Thanksgiving Meal (RATM). It started off being planned for the Chapel Next To The Mission Home (CNTTMH), moved next door to the MH, (guess - you may be right) bounced back to the CNTTMH, and finally, a day or two prior to the event, settled at the MH, which is much nicer than the CNTTMH. All of this was associated with various tweaks to the mission calender. OK, right now you may feel about these acronyms pretty much the way some of us feel about turkey, so we will stop, apart from the occasional leftover.

Firstly, there was a sign-up list, so we could each sign up to prepare whatever we would like for the RATM. We signed up for mashed potato and cranberry sauce, partially because we like our version of both, and partially because we had to pick something that required minimal preparation on the morning of the RATM, and partially because we did not wish to prepare anything that requires a reliable oven.  Lots of things were signed up for by various SM's, but not the turkey. Finally those in charge asked us if we would mind preparing a turkey in our oven at home, and bringing it to the feast. We regretfully/joyfully declined. We use our oven by heating it to 450 degrees, putting whatever we wish to cook into it, and then turning the temperature down to where it should be. It works pretty well for anything that can bake in 30 minutes or less, and moderately well for roasted vegetables, which need longer but which don't mind being cooked to a bit of a crisp. After all, that is the point, is it not? Anyway, we could not possibly leave our oven on unsupervised all morning and nor could we stay home and supervise it.
The non-office SM's in our mission seem to labor under the optimistic misconception that we can take time off whenever we feel like it and some elves will come in and do our work for us. The first half of that is trueish, we can take time off if we need to, provided that the phone gets answered. Our work, however, will wait patiently for us, hanging around the office until we deal with it.

We should also note that it was a normal work day for all the young missionaries, including the American ones, the phone calls came in as usual, and needed to be dealt with, which meant that we sat nearest the office access and dashed off to answer it whenever it rang. The mission president's brother texted him during the dinner and asked what they call Thanksgiving in the UK and after asking folks with a UK background, he texted back the laconic reply, "We call it Thursday." In fact there is a harvest festival of sorts locally, but it has become something only celebrated by the dwindling number and aging population of church attenders and is not so much a festival, as an opportunity to bring foodstuffs to be donated to local charities.

Which leads us to the next point. We are Americans and had assumed that  some form of Thanksgiving is celebrated everywhere, without thinking it through. Specifically we took for granted that we would be able to buy fresh cranberries in any supermarket, any time in November. Um. No! Several supermarkets claimed to keep fresh cranberries, just over in the corner of that shelf  if they had any, but they never had any. We had just about given up and had devised a method of making cranberry relish with dried cranberries and orange, along with some apple to give it some body, and perhaps some interesting spices, but first we would take a last ditch trip to Musselburgh to see if the Tesco's there had some cranberries. It was a pretty forlorn hope by then, but they did, so we bought some with joy and only the teeniest tinge of regret. Our dried cranberry substitute had started to sound quite interesting. The day before Thanksgiving bottled cranberry sauce appeared in several stores - talk about just-in-time manufacturing!

Our RATM went well. Our English SSOM (Senior Sister Office Missionary) had offered to decorate and set the table, and she had the good sense to provide disposable plates, glasses and tableware, so clean-up would be pretty minimal.. Her choice of decor was fun: she ordered some paper turkey decorations online - the sort that come flat and concertina outward into a three dimensional turkey shape.

We have never been to a RATM before, not one hosted and attended mostly by genuine born-and-bred American folk. Our own Better Than The Traditional Menu Adapted Thanksgiving Feast (BTTTMATF) has some 'customizations', as most of you know. But we really enjoyed the traditional one. The mashed potato was good. Elder Edwards mashed it into submission, heartily approving  of Sister Helps adding both cream cheese and butter, along with seasonings. There was a yam/sweet potato dish cooked in a pyrex dish, topped with nuts and loads of brown sugar. It was intensely sweet, inedibly so for our taste. There was a wonderful dish of assorted roasted vegetables, and the traditional dish of corn. Sister Miller made some excellent bread rolls. And there was turkey, of course.

The dessert table was somewhat unbelievable. Everyone knows that Americans eat pie at RATM's, but so much pie? Seriously? We had seen on the sign-up list that almost every couple volunteered to bring a pie or two, but were unprepared for the display. 18 people attended the RATM. At least eight large pies graced the dessert table.We are neither of us dessert eaters. Richard ate a small piece of a meringuey sort of pie and Louise ate a couple of grapes. Everyone else piled up their plates joyously and happily. Actually, we were joyous and happy too, just not piled up.

A good time was had by all, and then we trotted back to the office to get back to work.

Afternote: Turkeys and cranberries, both the fresh and sauced sort, are now, a week after Thanksgiving,  freely available in supermarkets everywhere. Christmas dinner, after all, was invented in the UK and if  you don't believe us just ask Charles Dickens!