My first expat Thanksgiving: A how-to in holiday meals abroad from an American in Aachen

Heard the one about the four Germans, three Americans, two Mexicans, a Frenchman and a Colombian? Then you haven’t heard about my Thanksgiving celebration this year.

It happened to be the first one I’ve ever attempted on my own (operative word: attempt). What’s more, it occurred in a foreign country – I’m a US citizen living in Aachen, Germany – and for a group of 11 people that included one vegetarian, one person allergic to nuts and one allergic to dairy. As the day drew closer, the sole pie I prepared for my family’s celebration last year seemed like sweet, buttered, hot-out-of-the oven small potatoes.

Sure enough, I admit to making 12 trips to the store to get all the necessary ingredients, nearly collapsing the goose after 15 minutes of tugging and snipping only to discover that innards should be removed from the other side, and likewise learning the hard way that increasing numbers on refrigerators indicate colder temperatures (not very helpful when you have a frozen-solid 4.4 kilo bird that needs to be on a serving platter in 24 hours).

In the process, I realized the one critical ingredient for a Thanksgiving dinner that you will never find in YouTube carving tutorials or expat forums is flexibility. This part of the world may not sell pumpkin in a can, offer fresh turkeys at a reasonable price, or give your side-dish-bearing guests a day off from work, but with a little determination and some old-fashioned rolling with the punches, you can be on your way to creating a holiday meal just like the ones you know from home.

The first step: Devising Plan B for those crucial little ingredients you’ll never find here
As anyone who has sought to make anything more complex than toast in Germany can attest, finding all of the ingredients you need for a meal can be difficult. More often than not, it’s actually impossible. It doesn’t help if you rely on cookbooks and recipes you’ve brought from home, but even finding ingredients listed in Das große Großmutters Koch- und Backbuch can be a challenge. So when planning for a holiday meal, it really is best to start as early as possible.

Starting on the pumpkins

For me, this meant starting a full four weeks before the meal, when I was preparing to host a Halloween party and hoping to bake pumpkin bars for the event. The mounting suspicion that Germany doesn’t sell canned pumpkin was first confirmed by the helpful grocery clerk who kindly referred me to a bag of pumpkin seeds and was later reinforced by my German-born friend, Cyril, who plainly told me that I really shouldn’t bother to continue the pointless search and instead should extract the pumpkin meat from something called Hokkaidos via an elaborate, baking and pureeing scheme. Little did I know at the time that Hokkaidos, or Japanese pumpkins that are sold in the vegetable aisle of just about every grocery store this time of year, are perfect for soups, pastas, breads and the coveted pumpkin pie.

Scooping the seeds out of the pumpkin

Harvesting the edible meat from Hokkaidos is simple (albeit a little time intensive) and there’s a wealth of recipes online to guide you through the process. I tested my recipe about two weeks before the dinner, knowing that if something wasn’t to my liking I had plenty of time to find an alternative for dessert. That wasn’t necessary, as not only was the pumpkin meat delicious but it had a vibrant, perfect shade of bright orange to it. The pie that resulted was easily one of the best I’ve ever had, and regardless of where I am for Thanksgivings yet to come, I will always opt for fresh pumpkin over canned.

Pumpkin meat ready to be pureed

The second step: Are turkeys even eaten here?
In my hometown of Brookline, MA, we have a turkey problem. This is to say that the wild birds are everywhere – backyards, busy streets, even trolley tracks. Germany also has a turkey problem, but in the sense that the poultry really aren’t consumed here. Perhaps this will change one day if the Germans can find a way to make it into a beer.

Most of the year in Germany, this is a nonissue, as even Americans find themselves eating roast turkey on only a handful of occasions. But come late November, it’s as close to an American culinary staple as they come, so one would be hard pressed to find an American expat in this area who isn’t keen on finding that illustrious bird for her genuine Thanksgiving dinner.

Carving the turkey

Problem One: The German word for turkey is the French word for whore. Even with my occasional penchant for dark humor, I couldn’t make that up. I’m fortunate that Cyril’s first language is French, since it enabled him to politely clue me in when I ended an e-mail by saying I was going to check out the “pute situation.” Unless you want to combine your grocery shopping with your red light district needs, you probably want to learn the difference between a few words when shopping along the Belgian-German border:

Print it out if you’d like, but the above chart will ensure that you’ll only be tracking down one type of meat this holiday season.

Which brings me to Problem Two: No one sells turkey here. Roast goose is by far the preferred bird, so all of those bins piled high with frozen birds this time of year contain nary a turkey. A German friend of mine, Sebastian, assured me that my local butcher could send away for a bird, one that any store-bought frozen variety – if I could find one – would pale in comparison to.

Tempted, I visited the always-reliable expat website, Toytown, to see what past hosts of a German Thanksgiving had to say. Sure enough, fellow expats talked of glorious fresh turkeys ordered from their butcher, though the birds did come with a steep price. After reading one report of a 6-kilo turkey going for north of 50 Euros, I decided I should take up anew my search for the frozen variety. Just around the time that Cyril notified me that he spotted frozen turkeys at the local Edeka, I found a Toytown post from 2003 claiming that Tengelmann sold them as well. And so I set out, with three destinations (all in Aachen) in mind: First, the Tengelmann subsidiary Kaiser’s; Second, the gourmet foods store at Galeria Kaufhof; Third, Edeka, which is a bit out of the way.

Making the stuffing

I have no idea why I didn’t start my search at Galeria Kaufhof .While on the expensive side, this place literally has everything an expat could need, from Pop Tarts and Swiss Miss to El Paso taco shells and Betty Crocker cake mix (plus a few other items that make the store worthy of its gourmet status). Of course, starting at Galeria Kaufhof would have rendered pointless a trip to the wholesale food funhouse of Metro, an especially useful destination if you plan on serving 10 kilos of Gouda for Thanksgiving. But the trouble of first visiting the Nettos, Rewes, and Kaiser’s of the world was not worth it. In the end, Galeria Kaufhof presented me with a bin full of both goose and turkey, and extended considerable legitimacy to my Thanksgiving dinner. In the future, start your search here.

Problem Three: A lot of people don’t like turkey, and roast goose sounds really cool. How to please the masses? Make two birds. Not only will you win authenticity points for preparing a roast goose (a traditional wintertime dish in this area), but those among you who prefer dark meat will be happy to learn that goose is comprised entirely of dark meat. For first time buyers of the bird, the US Department of Agriculture – an unexpectedly helpful source for Thanksgiving preparations – recommends buying 450-675g per person, as opposed to 450g per person of turkey. I followed a Gordon Ramsay recipe with honey, Chinese five-spice powder, and a liberal amount of lemon and lime, and the result had me considering a permanent inclusion of two birds at future Thanksgivings (and wishing I had bought closer to 1000g/person).

Colombian appetizers

Step 3: It takes a village
That I haven’t devoted at least half of my Thanksgiving story thus far to the other players involved – the guests – does not do justice to the large role they played in the meal. Every single one of the 11 people present at dinner came together to make it a success, despite the fact that, for several of them, their main reference to Thanksgiving came in the form of an American sitcom.

But hosting Thanksgiving as an expat affords you with a unique opportunity to mimic the original celebration, where different cultures came together and everyone offered something special of their own. Fortunately for us, this meant we had Colombian arepas and empanadas, Mexican quesadillas, blumenkohlsuppe or German cauliflower soup, schichtsalat or German layered salad, cranberry coulis, corn on the cob, traditional American stuffing, and Gewürzkranz mit Schokolade or German chocolate spice cake. We even had French mashed potatoes, though I do have the chef on record as saying the only thing French about it was the maker (it was delicious nonetheless).

Including your guests in the preparation of your meal could actually be the smartest thing you do. For starters, many a German kitchen and living area are not fully equipped to host such a large meal. As it did in my case, enlisting the help of a friend who is native to the country could provide you with a much-needed spacious venue and certain pieces of kitchen equipment that expats typically do not have on hand. Additionally, the more guests you include in the preparation of your meal, the more likely it is you’ll find the ingredients you need or get insider know-how about, for example, which type of goose is best to buy (junge Gans).

One important consideration you will want to make for your guests is which day of the week you host your holiday meal on. Only momentarily did I consider scheduling the meal for a weekend night, opting instead to celebrate it on the actual day. But this will inevitably produce logistical challenges for your guests, namely the feat of preparing a dish between the end of a work day and a reasonable dinner hour. Hosting the meal on a weekend would eliminate this problem and enable guests to stay long into the night. This year, only those who stayed past midnight for our celebration were able to enjoy a nightcap of Don Julio.

Thanksgiving meal

The final tip I’d like to share, particularly for those of you who are preparing a holiday meal for the very first time, is the following: Skype. I won’t name names, but for those of you who need to call and/or instant message Chef Dad throughout your preparations, the program comes in handy.

Some might find it inconvenient to be more than 5,000 km away from home for your first Thanksgiving. I would be one of them. After all, I could have avoided nearly all of the problems I encountered. But Thanksgiving has never been about convenience. From the start, it’s been about bringing people together, breaking bread and expressing gratitude for the gifts we’ve all been given. Whether you’re in your childhood kitchen or a friend’s apartment in Germany, you can create a more traditional Thanksgiving than you ever imagined. Guten Appetit!

Guten Appetit!

By Luisa Maria Badaracco

Luisa Badaracco is a freelance journalist originally from Brookline, Massachusetts. As of December 2009, she is a resident of Aachen, Germany.