Thanksgiving: Turkeys and Turtles

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the United States! I hope you were able to spend a relaxing day with those you love.

For those of you who are not familiar with Thanksgiving, it is a holiday that for Americans falls on the fourth Thursday of November. On that day, it is typical to play or watch American football, watch parades, and eat a very large meal with your family. Almost all businesses are closed on that day, and the government and schools are closed. It is a day to express gratitude for everything we have.

I have celebrated Thanksgiving every single year of my life, but only recently have I been the "senior female" for the day. Perhaps it is sexist, but in my experience usually the women cook the turkey. (Thanksgiving meals tend to center around a turkey.) So, for most of my adulthood, I have been in charge of side dishes or pie, and I am quite good at those. The very few times I have been responsible for the turkey, I've taken the easy road and only done turkey breasts. 

This year, well, somehow this year, I volunteered to cook a turkey for the EMBASSY Thanksgiving meal. So for my first time cooking a turkey, I was going to make it for my husband's coworkers, and, you know, the Ambassador. (Granted there were multiple turkeys being cooked for this dinner, but still.)

The Embassy Thanksgiving meal was on Wednesday. On Tuesday, some friends and I met a dealer in the parking lot. An exchange was made, and I drove away with a trash bag full of loot.

Doesn't that sound so clandestine? (Excuse me for a minute while I chuckle over how funny I am.)

I got home and opened the trash bag and beheld the largest turkey I have ever seen. It was about 22 pounds (about 10 kilos). Gratefully, the dealer (who was actually a farmer) had removed the feathers and innards. Well, almost—there was something lurking within, but it was all so gross I didn't investigate thoroughly.

Staring at that naked turkey was terrifying. 

Look at my face. I'm terrified. I've never felt so out of my element as when that neck was flopping around as I tried to heft that huge beast around.

My first problem was that I had no idea what to do. Luckily the internet had my back. There were lots of great websites with advice on what to do with this huge, fresh turkey. My best helpers ended up being my army of women back in the United States. My mom, sisters-in-law, and sister had lots to say. I'm apparently the only chicken in this group. (Get it? Haha.)

Some of you might have seen my facebook post with this picture. Yes, this North American gal found herself with an African jungle turkey that was almost too large for her European oven. Any pan large enough for the turkey was too large for the oven. So I put a drip pan down at the bottom and placed the turkey straight on the racks. I attempted to cover it with tin foil—with limited success.

If you're paying close attention, you'll note that the oranges, onions, and garlic that I stuffed in the turkey are not staying stuffed. (Does anyone else think it looks like the turkey is pooping orange halves? No? Just me? Okay then.) The ingredients didn't stay in well, because I apparently cooked that bird upside down. It never occurred to me to flip it the other way, but it definitely would have held everything in better. And I left the liver and heart in there. I couldn't handle them.

The turkey cooked very quickly and got a little toasty on the neck and one wing, but it actually turned out really, really well. All of my personal expectations for my cooking were exceeded! (I was expecting utter, humiliating failure.) (This was exacerbated by the fact that I lost power twice during the cooking experience.) (Yay Gabon!) But then it was time for gravy. I like to pretend that gravy was invented by food scientists who use magic powders that have nothing to do with animals. Unfortunately I had no magic with me.

I took the drippings out of the pan and felt a lot of anxiety about what to do next. (Again, this food was for the Embassy!) Luckily, the Boling women didn't let me down. Specifically, Rachel and Mindee were awake at this time (don't ask me why—the time difference makes me wonder why, but thank goodness they were awake). Many, many texts and a lot of laughter later, Rachel and Mindee went to bed (?), and I went off to the Embassy with my efforts.

Voilà!

I survived the turkey.

Then it was Thursday. I just had two turkey breasts for our own Thanksgiving dinner. Now that I had conquered the turkey, it almost felt like a let down to just stick two breasts in a slow cooker. As one who doesn't eat very much meat, I hadn't realized that I was denying my family and guests the dark meat, legs, and wings that many people like. I guess I'll contact the turkey farmer and get a turkey for my own family next year. (I hope he has smaller ones!!)

Since it is not a holiday here, the kids had school. Last year I kept them in school half day on Wednesday and Thursday and then pulled them out at lunch time to attend the Embassy meal and our family dinner. This year, we kept them in school all day on Wednesday and then took them out all day on Thursday.

Here they can be found watching sports, as one does, on Thanksgiving.

Since they were home, we decided to get everyone involved in the meal making. The kids were pretty excited about signing up and actually did a great job making food. It's amazing how much Jill and Daniel can do independently now. Last year for Thanksgiving I was SO BUSY. As I said, the kids were in school, so it was just me and Jeff trying to cook everything. (I'm so grateful for a husband who knows what he's doing in the kitchen.) We had not received our consumables shipment from the United States, so we had to do everything from scratch. I mean, for my green bean casserole, I had to literally first start with mushrooms to make cream of mushroom soup and then get to actually make the casserole. Everything took soooooo long. This year with so many chefs and fabulous inventions like canned soup, everything went so much quicker. It was nice to have more time outside of the kitchen. (Alice ended up doing the the green bean casserole and mashed potatoes, because she was crying that she didn't have enough jobs.)

Speaking of making things from scratch, I had purchased frozen pie crusts this year, because I had not enjoyed cutting the butter with a fork into my flour last year, but Jeff watched a youtube video and was all sorts of motivated, so he and Daniel did one pie from scratch and one pie with ready-to-use ingredients.

Watching a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving while waiting for their turns in the kitchen.

One of my friends gave me an inflatable turkey. Could there be a better centerpiece on Thanksgiving??

We had our church missionaries come over to celebrate the day with us. Two of our elders are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one from Canada, and one from the United States. (Don't worry, Canadian friends, Jeff and I (mostly Jeff) (because I had to go to the store for ingredients three times) cooked a Thanksgiving dinner in October for our beloved Canucks. (We had four Canadians with us that day.) (Also, I like their Thanksgiving date better than ours. It's half way in between Labor Day and Halloween, and then they can start celebrating Christmas whenever they want with no haters.) (It also makes more sense when you consider it's supposed to be an end-of-harvest meal.)

I noticed that one of the Congolese elders had not tried the cranberry sauce. I asked him why not, and he said he already had during Canadian Thanksgiving. I was perplexed. I knew for a fact that the cranberry had not already arrived in the mail for me to be able to serve it at that Thanksgiving. After a few minutes, I discovered that he was thinking of the cherry pie that Jeff had made. Ha. I tried to explain that cranberry sauce and cherry pie filling are very different, but he never tried it.

We made a Thanksgiving tree, because we try to be cute sometimes. If you notice, Gordon's best friend made the tree twice. Gordon is incredibly grateful for him. Also of note: Gordon can write his name. ?!

Of course we played games while waiting for pie time!

The kids went back to school on Friday. That evening after school, there was a movie night fundraiser. Three students wanted to help raise funds for the construction of the first park in Gabon. The movie selected was Home Alone, which none of my children had seen. During the course of the evening, Daniel was told repeatedly that he looks just like Kevin in the film. I hadn't seen the film in a decade and a half, and it was actually really fun to watch it with a room full of kids. The laughter was so loud during the final scenes. (Why do we find violence so funny?) I had forgotten about the black and white film that had the shooting and about the various language issues, but my older two kids really enjoyed it. Gordon had stayed home with Jeff, and Alice wasn't sure how she felt about it.

The following day we were off to a weekend camping trip. Here we are waiting at the marina to catch a boat ride across the Estuary.

Have you ever gone beach camping? Sand. Everywhere. All the time. That's probably the dumbest and most obvious thing I've ever said, but I truly wasn't prepared for the amount of sand that ended up in our tent. (Also, I was unprepared for the workout of sand walking. It uses such strange leg muscles compared to walking on solid ground.) (Thirdly, the bottoms of my feet are rubbed not raw—but getting there. The weekend ended up being quite the exfoliating experience. I definitely lost a few layers of skin by walking around with sand inside my beach shoes.)

Nothing like practically having the beach to yourself!

Just before leaving, I jumped off the boat to return all of our pillows to the car, because it just seemed like too much stuff to lug from the boat to the campsite. In the bags with the pillows were also the lovies and sheets. So we had six people and three sleeping bags, and that was it. When Gordon and Alice discovered that I had left their teddy bears and pillows behind, they actually kicked me out of the tent. "No cuddles with you, Mommy! No songs. No stories! We don't want you in here!" (They cooled down after about five minutes and let me help them get to bed.) (In hindsight, I'm glad we didn't have our bedroom pillows with us, because it rained quite thoroughly during the night and morning, and the sleeping bags got wet. If I had had our pillows with us, we wouldn't have had dry pillows to use when we returned home.)

The point of the camping trip is that right now is nesting season for leatherback sea turtles. I was previously unaware, but this is a nocturnal experience. Our group had paid for a guide, and his job was to wander the beach from 11:00pm to 4:00am looking for sea turtles and to report back if any were found. He found two and woke us all up around 1:00am (maybe?—the times are estimated).

Gordon and Alice were not interested in being woken up. Jill got up fairly easily. Daniel went back to sleep but then finally got up. After walking for about forty-five minutes on the beach, he was pretty sure he'd made a terrible mistake, but we didn't let him give up at that point. Jeff, Jill, Daniel, and I saw four adult turtles in various stages: leaving the ocean to begin nesting, actively laying eggs, resting above eggs just laid, and returning to the ocean after nesting.

Can you get a sense of just how large these sea turtles are?!

This mama chose a rather difficult spot. We were worried she was stuck for a while, but she did finally make it to the top of that rather steep embankment.

When we finally trudged back into camp, Alice woke up and was interested in going out, so Jeff went back out with her, and they saw one adult turtle and baby turtles! Apparently an eager-beaver mama laid her eggs two months early, because there was a nest of hatching turtles with little babies making their way to the water.

Can anyone tell me what this fruit is? I had guessed jackfruit, but when I googled what jackfruit look like, it doesn't look like jackfruit. As you can see, it is growing from a tree but is watermelon sized. Any ideas?

Other than playing soccer, Daniel's other favorite activity this weekend was trying to catch crabs. They are crazy fast. There were also large crabs racing around. One of the large ones snapped at Jill's toe under the water and made her bleed a little. (That's one way to learn a lesson about wearing your water shoes!)

Our camping spot was right on the tip, so going right from our tents put us in Estuary waters and going left put us out on the Atlantic Ocean. We were near Point Denis, inside Gabon's Pongara National Park.

So an explanation (apology?) for the next photo: my friend shared this picture with me. And I decided to show you all how glamorous I always look. (You're welcome.) Seriously though, tinted goggles work very well to protect your eyes from the sun. And swim shirts keep my shoulders from burning. This equatorial sun is no joke. I have not been burnt the whole time we've lived here, but I have had my freckles multiply, and I'm actually getting dark patches of skin on my face and arms. (So, that's humbling. I've been asked if I'm growing a mustache or have food smeared on my face or turning "morena." But nope. Just small parts of my skin here and there have decided to change color.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Thank you to my friends who shared pictures with me from this weekend.)