Thanksgiving for 90!

As I said in the last entry, our days have become a bit more routine. the routine, however, never seems to last very long. Shortly after the first week of November we had a special dinner to welcome the director of SYA to Zaragoza, a special dinner for Andee's birthday, and then Andee left us for a week to travel to San Sebastián with another teacher and a group of 20 students. Houseboy Koko was left to clean, supervise, give some help and some tests to a couple of kids who didn't attend the trip, and take mini-day trips out on his bicycle.
San Sebastián is widely considered to be the most beautiful city in Spain, and so of course when Andee went there, it rained sideways for 2 days. In addition to Donostia (the Basque name for the city), Andee and her team of teens went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao (for modern art), and to France (for bragging rights, they were only there for about an hour-long enough to have a coffe and a crepe). It was a great trip, and Andee came back with a new food addiction: Croquetas de pistacho (pistachio croquettes). She has been looking more of them ever since. She's probably in the kitchen looking for some now, in fact. There aren't any there.
Well, when Andee got back to ZAZ the house was clean, the laundry done, and the kids were happy to see another parent. Back to our routine.
For 2 weeks.
Then, the BIG day happened. The holiday abroad to top all holidays abroad. On one level its easy to eplain Thanksgiving to Spainards. Its a huge celebration of eating too much. In a way, we celebrate like this every lunch (someday I'll try to describe the very Spanish way of eating lunch). I'm talking about, of course, Thanksgiving. Its the BIG family holiday for most of our students, and the first one they are missing, so we try to do it up big. So SYA connects with a restaurant here in the city to provide a banquet for all of the students, faculty, faculty families, Spanish students that attend my special exchange-conversation class, and invited dignitaries. In all, 90 people.
Are you ready for the punch line?
In either a fit of lunacy, a transient bout of sado-masochism, or in recognition that I do nothing but take saunas all day, Griffin (Resident Top Dog at SYA Zaragoza) put ME on detail duty.
Stop laughing.
Its true. I went to the restaurant to go over the traditional Thanksgiving menu that we developed, deliver the special recipes, and organize the design of the room and explain the order of events. This meeting took place 2 days before Thanksgiving, Plenty of time to get everything together, right?
Right.....
Try to imagine (this is for everyone except Brian Scheidegger) cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 90 people. Take a breath, and wrap your head around that. This was the menu:

10 turkeys, with gravy
Mashed potatos (or potatoes if you're a Senator from Indiana)
Mashed sweet potatos
green beans
peas and onions
Doug's dad's cornbread stuffing
vegetarian stuffing
cranberry sauce
bread
desserts, including pecan pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and strawberry bread.
Oooof....
Now the interesting part- The American teachers were responsible for making dessert (I made the apple pies, 8 of them), and the rest was to be made by ONE COOK. No joke, one little Spanish lady was going to try and make dinner for all of us. Also, this was to be her first thanksgiving dinner. she ahd never cooked most of the items.
Also also, she was going to do all of this AFTER cooking lunch for 125 people (remember, lunch here is in the early afternoon, about 2:30).
No way.
When we met on Tuesday, I could see the panic setting in and I volunteered to help her with the meal, which left me only thursday morning to make all 8 apple pies. Oh well. She and I went over the recipes, the order for serving food, everything. And I left with one request: Please find me cornbread. My job on Thanksgiving was to serve as her assistant and prep cook, and to make the two stuffing recipes (I left her with a detailed list of ingredients). Easy enough.

Fast forward to 5:30 pm on Thanksgiving (dinner to be served at 8:45). I arrived with 6 of the 8 pies (Andee had to other two) and my dress clothes in a backpack. And the first thing I was told on arrival was:

"No cornbread."

No cornbread?? I'm supposed to make cornbread stuffing for 90 people without CORNBREAD? Sorry, no cornbread anywhere in the city. And no one knows how to make it either.
Hmmm........... (insert here the tiny "pop" of my brain exploding)

So I explored the kitchen and found some baguettes, celery, onions, sausage, and spices, and I improvised. No cornbread, no recipe, just a kitchen, a harried head chef, and about 2 1/2 hours.
I finished both stuffings AND helped explain why we need both mashed potatos and mashed sweet potatos.
And I got dressed on time.

My final observations around Thanksgiving "Spanish style" is that the Spanish have a very specific way of eating. First there is a drink, then a primer plato or first plate, followed by a segundo plato. The whole idea of being in a restaurant and putting everything on the table at once is foreign to Spain as blood sausage (morcilla) is to the US. I simply could not convince the waiters that we wanted all of the food together. Finally I told them to put out the vegetables and potatos first. It made them very happy.

Next year I'm going out for sushi, or hot wings, or something else for Thanksgiving. Definitely nothing with cornbread.

Sorry, justyne (and everyone else that has chastised me for abandoning the blog)!

My goodness, time does zip on by! In a funny way, both very little and so much has happened since the last blog entry (was it really in OCTOBER?). "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." (This last stolen shamelessly from The Princess Bride).
Over the course of the end of October, through...well, today, we have followed a kind-of pattern every day, broken up by major events. First, the pattern:
After the normal morning preparations (see earlier entry), Andee goes to work, and I go to work out. Because that's the kind of guy I am. A workout guy.
OK, stop laughing. I'm serious.
About mid-October I joined a health club around the corner from our piso. Its a small gym, with good exercise equipment, aerobics-etc. studios, jacuzzis, personal trainers (fort extra hire), ultra-modern chic decor, clean changing rooms, and about a zillion aerobic, pilates, yoga, and cross training classes every day.
Oh, and a sauna.
So every day, off I go with my very un-chic LL Bean backpack gym bag and my equally un-chic workout clothes, and head all of 30 seconds down the street to my sauna-with-attached-gym. Because anyone who knows me, knows that THAT is why I joined a health club. Not that I don't take advantage of the other things that they offer. I really am exercising, its just that although the workouts vary day by day, the sauna doesn't. So for 60 Euros a month, I get to have a sauna EVERY WEEKDAY, and its a hot sauna at that. "Siekman-hot" (for those of you that know what that means). And that's not all. Like I said, I really do work out first. On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to pilates class, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have yoga. On Fridays I go to a high-energy aerobics class called "Body Attack" that basically kills me for the weekend. In addition, I do other weight and stretching workouts, and every hour on the half-hour a ten minute mini-masochistic exercise is offered that the really, really, extremely good looking workout assistants call abdominales. Apparently abdominales is Spanish for "I hate myself and I want to hurt all around my midsection, so please torture me."
Oh, and also, apparently Spanish men do NOT do group workouts. All of the 50 year old women with whom I exercise think that its just "sooo cute" that I do pilates and yoga. My back, however, has not felt this good in years, and I have thus far avoided all of the cold and flu epidemics typical of schools. "So I've got that going for me. Which is nice." (Caddyshack)

ALSO, we now have a weekend activity. Because abdominales isn't enough fun. Now, on Saturdays, we pack up a snack, get up too early, and head off to the traditional initiation event for parents of 10 year old boys: The 5-on-5 short-field soccer game. the parents of Ben's team are really super people, and some of them bring coffee and cake every Saturday for the fans (ourselves). Those of you reading this who don't have children at this age pretty much cannot understand the stress involved in watching your child compete. We all love that our kids are playing soccer on asphalt on a Saturday morning, but rather than experiencing the joy of watching our progeny run, twist, kick, celebrate, and generally frolic with their friends, most of us are focused of on a few, desperate mantra: PLEASE don't let him fall on the asphalt, please don't let him miss the ball when its kicked to him, PLEASE don't let him cry when the other team scores. To his great credit and my pride, Ben is a wonderful person. He is playing on a team with other 10-year olds that began playing soccer in utero, and he keeps trying. And he's still positive. And...he's getting better. He can't kick as hard as them, and he can't pass the ball sideways while running the other way, but he does know how to close passing lanes and to mark up on throw-ins and corner kicks. The rest will come. But in the meantime, PLEEEEASE........

Coming soon: Thanksgiving for 90!