Thanksgiving in Sweden

I'll start this post with the question we've been asked many times this month by American friends, "Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Sweden?"  If someone thinks about that a minute, they'll realize Thanksgiving is about pilgrims settling in America, so it's a very American-specific holiday like the 4th of July. Thanksgiving is as foreign to Swedes as St. Lucia Day is to Americans. :-) It was strange to have what would be a huge holiday in the US be just another work and school day here, but we managed to celebrate anyway.

Fall in Sweden-- this is the park across the street from our house

T wanted Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving Day.  M wanted to wait until the weekend, arguing that it wouldn't feel like Thanksgiving without her being home to help cook and without time to lounge around afterwards.  They both got their wish because we wound up having two Thanksgiving dinners. 

T was supposed to be in Germany all week, but he used the American holiday as an excuse to come home a day early. He flew home Thursday afternoon so that we could attend an American expat Thanksgiving dinner that we had kindly been invited to. I guess calling it an expat dinner oversimplifies it-- most of the families there were half Swedish/ half American.  The food and company were great and it was fun sharing conversations that only other Americans living abroad understand-- like which peanut butter brand tastes like real peanut butter and where to buy actual mayonaise.  :-) It was a lovely evening.  Thank you Lisa for inviting us!-- Sorry, forgot to bring my camera to that dinner, so no pictures.

For our own Thanksgiving dinner, we decided to invite two Swedish families to share it with us.  It was their first American Thanksgiving.  That both increased and decreased the pressure on me, the cook.  On the one hand, I felt like I needed to represent American food well.  On the other hand, if something turned out abnormal, they wouldn't be the wiser. 

The first challenge preparing traditional American dishes in Sweden is finding the ingredients.  Luckily, there are enough Americans in Sweden that they stock a few Thanksgiving basics for us.  I found turkeys at a few stores.  I don't know if they sell them any other time of year. They are not a popular food here (though you can routinely buy goose or duck).  They are much smaller than the ones you buy in America.  I bought two 4 1/2 kg ones (about 10 lbs each) instead of one big turkey-- after measuring both my oven and fridge to make sure that whatever I bought I'd be able to store and cook.  I'm sure I looked very weird at the store measuring turkeys with my measuring tape but hey, my oven is TINY! For pumpkin pie, I snagged a fresh pumpkin right before Halloween. It's good I did because that is the only time I've seen any in the stores.  The kids carved it with some Swedish friends (who had never carved a jack-o-lantern) before I cooked and pureed it for future pies.

I also couldn't find evaporated milk, though I'm told that you can find it occasionally.  I made my own with powdered milk.  It made the whole pumpkin pie thing a bit more complicated than the usual a can of this, a can of that, a little spice and eggs. 

Our family's traditional sausage stuffing was also a problem.  I started investigating sausage over a month ago and found that they have nothing like good old Jimmy Dean sausage.  I wound up making my own sausage imitation by cooking ground pork (which they have lots of) with a bunch of different seasonings (www.cookingforseven.com/2009/12/breakfast-sausage-spice-blend).  The resulting stuffing was okay, but not as good as the real thing.  I did manage to find sweet potatoes at one store and mini marshmallows.  I substituted hazelnuts for pecans in a pie I like to make.  Oh, and I made jello out of saft and clear gelatin.  What is saft?  It is the Swedish equivalent of Kool-aid but instead of a powder it is a concentrated liquid that you dilute with water. 

The next challenge was trying to refrigerate everything. Our refrigerator is also TINY.  Luckily it is cold outside so the shed made a great place for chilling pop bottles and the car made a great extra refrigerator for pies and such.

I dug through the closets of our furnished rental house and found two table cloths that were respectable.  I wanted to find some nice silk flowers and ribbon to make some centerpieces.  Trouble is I didn't know where to buy that here. I have to admit that sometimes I really do miss Wal-mart and its one-stop shopping.  I wound up resorting to my computer and printer to make some nut cups and napkin rings for the tables and M made a classic hand turkey for us. Once the food was out, there was no room for a centerpiece anyway.

Our flock of turkey nut cups/place cards

Adult table in foreground and "kids table" in the distance-- more accurately a "teen table"

 I'm afraid we didn't get a good picture of the food before everyone started eating. :-) But we had a great time.  Our Swedish friends were good sports and happily ate our strange food-- even though they found some things, like cubes of bread with seasoning on them, a bit perplexing.

After dinner, we all watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving--we have two: the silly one you see on TV and an educational one that tells the story of the Mayflower crossing and the first Thanksgiving.  We watch them every year and this year they served the added purpose of explaining the concepts and traditions of Thanksgiving to our guests.  Then the pre-teens raced over to the basement for dart gun fights, chasing and spying with walkie-talkies.  The grown-ups and teens played a little guitar hero and then moved on to other games and activities.  After a few hours, we brought out the pies and ate those. It was funny to have pumpkin pie be an unusual dessert. :-) And later the kids would wander through and grab leftovers until we realized it had gotten late and it was time for everyone to go home and go to bed.

We're so thankful our friends came and spent the day with us.  With the house full of good food, good company, and the sounds of laughing kids, it felt like Thanksgiving even though we were a continent away!