An American Thanksgiving in Korea

I love Thanksgiving, so it almost killed me that I wasn't going to get to celebrate it in Korea. A couple months ago I thought of the idea to cook a dinner at Heather's house, since she lives in a posh enough building to actually have an oven. When I mentioned it to her, she got really excited, since she had a Thanksgiving dinner at her church while she was in the US, and I think she still dreams about it.

I invited a lot of people--Heather put me in charge of inviting, even though it was her house. I started by inviting three of the other teachers, plus Heather's nuclear family, her parents, and her brother's family. Then Kate's class found out about it and they all wanted to go, too. I mentioned it to Heather, because I thought it was kind of funny, but she really liked the idea. I ended up inviting my two most advanced classes, a total of 13 kids. If everyone had come, it would have been 28 people, including me. Heather suggested we do a rotation, so there weren't a million people in her apartment at once.

Shopping for this thing was a nightmare. There were a number of items I thought I wouldn't be able to find, and I had to make pretty much everything from scratch. Heather took me to an open market last weekend, where there was supposed to be a store with a lot of Western spices and such. But it's closed on Sundays. Those bastards. We went back this Saturday, and I found that all they had were jumbo jars of spices. All I needed at most was a couple teaspoons of each. But I had no choice. I'll just have to do a lot of good cooking from now on.

Here's the menu:

Deviled eggs
Fruit platter
Celery with cream cheese and olives

4 chickens (there's no turkey here, and the chickens are quite small)
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet potato casserole
Green bean casserole (with onion ring chips instead of fried onions--it wasn't too bad)
Cranberry sauce
Broccoli with white sauce
Dinner rolls
Eggnog


Chocolate cream pie (I had boxes of instant pudding sent from home)


I tried to make gravy from the chicken fat, but I suck at making gravy. I've only succeeded once. I was so pissed.

Getting all this involved the initial shopping trip, which wasted about an hour, but we got a couple things and went to a noodle place where they make the noodles from scratch while you wait. Then Saturday I was shopping from 10 to almost 3 with Heather, then Grace, one of the teachers. Heather took me back to the market to get the spices and most of the vegetables. Grace took me to Homeplus to get the baking stuff and the other food I couldn't get at the market, and a roasting pan, as that's not a common item in Korean homes. We also tried to get a cookie sheet, as I had a package of cookies from home (which I didn't end up making), and I wanted it to cook the rolls on, but they didn't have any. We then went to four cookware stores, with no luck. We finally tried E-mart, and even though they didn't have a cookie sheet, they did have a pizza pan, which was close enough. I also used it to cook the crusts for my pies, since I bought what I thought were disposable pie tins, but were actually just thin metallic serving plates. I just folded up the sides to make them higher and baked them atop the pizza pan. It worked out pretty well.

I didn't end up finding chicken stock for the stuffing, which totally threw me off. I had to boil chicken for a couple hours and make the damn stock myself. On Saturday, after over four hours of shopping, I spent over six hours making cranberry sauce, eggnog, sweet potato casserole, and pie crusts, and doing some prep work for the stuffing. Kate helped out. She had a ball. On Sunday, I made all the rest, with Heather and Kate helping as best they could. Even Wesley chopped some onions for me when he got there.

Heather said that she had thought American food was much easier to make than Korean food, but after she saw me do all that, she changed her mind. American food is much harder to make. I disagree, but I guess we all feel more comfortable with stuff we're used to making, or at least with ingredients we're used to. This was the first time I was making most of the food from scratch, so I felt like I was floundering quite a bit. All the stress made me completely flip out on a number of occasions.


Here's a picture of my feast, once I finally finished it:

Haha, just kidding (sucka). I got that from the internets. Actually, even though I brought my camera, I was so busy cooking that I didn't have time to take any pictures. Too bad. It would have been cool.

I had originally thought I would be done the first round by two or three, but we didn't end up sitting down to eat until about 4:30, which was shortly before the second rotation of guests was supposed to arrive. But even though I invited a couple dozen people, it ended up being just me, Heather's core family, Leon and Sue (teachers), and three students. Heather's parents showed up later and ate the remains of the meal, as well. Grace was feeling too tired from being sick all week, Heather's brother is always unreliable, and students are, too. Most of them had to go places with their parents, and the rest just didn't feel like coming, I guess.

The reactions to the food were funny. Leon, being British, is used to this kind of food at Christmas, although he'd never had eggnog before. It was his dream to try it. I think he's still dreaming about it, he loved it so much. Anyway, that's one happy customer, with the food too, it seemed. Heather and Sue also loved everything, and Heather's husband seemed pretty happy with most of it.

The kids were another story. I think Kate liked most of it, having had Thanksgiving and other American food before, but all Sally ate was broccoli (without sauce) and a roll, maybe some potatoes. Cindy didn't seem to excited about the food, but I think she ate more than Sally. I'm not sure how Wesley and Jiho (Heather's son) enjoyed it, as they ate in the other room, but I didn't get any compliments.

When Heather's parents came, they ate a lot of the chicken. Her dad picked the carcass clean, and his wife just forked it and put it on his plate finally. They seemed interested in the other food, but I'm not sure how well they took it. For those that didn't like the food, I think it was because some of it was too sweet (sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce), and some of it was too... creamy? (deviled eggs, green bean casserole, white sauce).

By the time we were ready for dessert, it was just Heather and her husband and kids, Leon, Wesley, and I, so we only ate one pie. That was fine with me. I got to take the other pie home. Suite. Although I didn't have to reheat the leftovers from the first meal for another bunch of people, I did have two more chickens that had been brining all day, and needed to be cooked. After eating for a couple hours, resting for a bit, having dessert, and trying to hook up my computer to Heather's huge tv with no success (damn you, HDTV), I got around to that. Then Heather's husband drove me home at like 10pm with two big boxes and two bags full of supplies, spices, tupperware dishes with leftovers, and cookware. I've rarely been so tired. I'm still tired.

I did get around to taking a couple pictures of leftovers that didn't look totally mangled by the time I got home. Here's the chocolate cream pie that we didn't eat:


Dessert was supposed to have been epic, with two pies, fresh baked cookies (the package Dad sent me), and brownies from a package Heather somehow got a hold of, but then Heather bought ice cream, and that and one piece of pie ended up being enough for everyone who was left by the time dessert rolled around.

Here's the cranberry sauce. I had to use dry cranberries instead of fresh or frozen, so I think it turned out much less saucy than it should have. I still kind of like it. It was probably the most expensive thing I made. I think it must have cost about 20 or 25 bucks, and that's only what I had to pay. About a third of the berries I used came from Heather's fridge, having been bought a long time ago, but never used.

Anyway, the grand total for the meal was somewhere around 150,000 won, which is about a day and a third's pay. I can't be sure of the actual total, as Heather did a lot of grocery runs when we ran out of something or I realized I'd forgotten something, or someone ate something I was supposed to use. She kept saying I should do this again for Christmas, as we have that off and she loved the food so much. I'm thinking about telling her I'll do it if she gives me Christmas Eve off to cook.