American Thanksgiving in Spain

Thanksgiving Day, or el dia de accion de gracias, is not celebrated in Spain. It isn’t even observed here. Surprisingly though, when I tell people about it they immediately know what I am referring to. “Is that the day that everyone sits at a big table and eats turkey?” is what they all ask me.

Thanksgiving is and probably will always be my favorite holiday. I have so many wonderful memories from the past from this day. It is the day when all of my family members get together and have a great time cooking, eating, playing and even dancing. This was the very first Thanksgiving that I was spending away from my family and it did make me really sad.

Fortunately, my friends in Alicante were planning a Thanksgiving dinner there that was going to be held on Friday to coordinate with everyone’s work schedule. I was super excited about being able to spend Thanksgiving with other Americans and even volunteered to make a sweet potato pie.

I had originally planned to make some sweet potato pies on Wednesday and bring them to school on Thursday to share with the other teachers, but things didn’t go according to plan. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were extremely rainy days, and because of the excessive flooding in Jávea, school was canceled on Tuesday and Wednesday and I was not able to go to the store. So Thursday was just a regular day. I went to school (and talked about Thanksgiving to all of my classes), went to my Valenciano class, and came home.

Later that day, I went to the British supermarket, Iceland, to get some items for baking. Fortunately I was able to find several items that I needed, including pie crust, which I have been desperately searching for.

When I got back home I skyped my family to see what they were up to and I was so happy to be able to talk to everyone, including my cousins and aunts. That made my day. I also got my mom’s sweet potato pie recipe from her, since this was my very first time making it.

That night I stayed up late making my pies. I wanted to make two: one to leave at my piso, and the other to take with me to Alicante for our Thanksgiving celebration. In the morning, I left one of the sweet potato pies on the kitchen counter with a note attached to it telling to my roommates to try it.

On Friday morning, I took a bus to Alicante. My trip to Alicante was actually for business and pleasure. The pleasure of course being the Thanksgiving dinner, and the business is that I was finally going to pick up my NIE/Tarjeta de Identidad (which is a card that proves that I am a Spanish resident) after a very long process.  As soon as I got to Alicante I immediately caught a bus to the NIE office and picked up my card. I was surprised at how quick and easy the entire process was. I am happy to say that I am now officially a resident of Spain!

Once I picked up my NIE I headed back to the center of the city, stopped somewhere for breakfast (I was famished) and then headed to meet my American friend for some grocery shopping.

I love going to the fresh food market in Alicante because it’s so large and there is such a wide variety of things (But honestly, every market would probably look huge in comparison to Javea’s). The first floor is full of fresh fruit and vegetable stands. There is also a lot of bread, cheese, preserves and things and seafood located on that floor.  The second floor is where all of the meats are located. And I wouldn’t suggest going there to anyone that has a weak stomach because the Spanish people are not so concerned about taking body parts off when it comes to the meat.  There were lots of skinned rabbits (Rabbit is very popular here), bulls faces, and a lot of other scary looking things. If there was ever a place for me to become a vegetarian, it would definitely be here. The two of us were looking for a Turkey, but they all had their long necks and heads attached to them so we decided to just let the American guy, who was also cooking with us, handle the meat part.

When we got back to the piso we immediately started preparing the food. I started cutting up the vegetables and things that we got from the market and she started preparing the salad and also tidying up her piso a bit. Later on, when all of the Americans got off work, we were joined by two others. I went to the store once again with someone else to buy some things to make chocolate brownies and an apple pie.  We made both of the desserts when we returned.

The whole cooking experience turned out to be very interesting. We were probably missing at least one ingredient for everything that we cooked (because we were in Spain of course) and we also almost burned up the piso trying to light the gas oven that none of us knew how to light; however, we all had a lot of fun cooking together.

The guests arrived around 9:30/10:00 pm (which is the regular Spanish dinner time) and we socialized and drank a little until all of the food was warmed up and on the table. The end result was great! We had two baked chickens (instead of turkey), stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, a green bean casserole, bread, a salad, and a sweet potato soufflé. For dessert, we had a sweet potato pie, chocolate brownies, an apple pie and vanilla ice cream. All of the guests brought wine, beer, and some other drinks.

Besides us 5 Americans that did the cooking, also in attendance were one of the girl’s American boyfriend, a Spanish co-worker of another American, one German guy, one French girl, and about 5 Italians. It was indeed an international Thanksgiving. I loved talking to the other people from different countries and also sharing my culture with them. I believe that everyone enjoyed the dinner and had a great time (and I must say that my sweet potato pie was awesome!) We stayed up late that night talking, drinking coffee, and watching funny youtube videos about different cultural stereotypes.

I stayed over my friend’s piso that night and went back to Jávea the next day.  When I got home, I saw that my roommates had tried the sweet potato pie and left notes for me thanking me and talking about how good it was.

I couldn’t have asked for a better Thanksgiving in Spain!