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.