Thanksgiving
In Switzerland
Turkey
Day ~ by Bonnie Burns
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you move to a new country, you get a whole new set of holidays and traditions.
In Zurich, Switzerland, they celebrate Fastnacht, Sechselauten, and Knabenschiessen,
but they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Cooking the traditional meal in
America may be overwhelming, but at least you can find the ingredients.
For Thanksgiving
in Switzerland, I wanted turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, cranberry
sauce, the works. After I invited some of my new Swiss friends and a couple
American expats to the feast, I began the preparations. I had never seen
a frozen turkey at the grocery store, so I went down to the corner butcher
to place an order.
“Should the
turkey come from the USA?” the butcher asked in halting English.
“A Swiss turkey
will be just fine,” I replied.
“I am so very
sorry, but we do not have turkeys in Switzerland,” he said. “Will a French
turkey do?”
A country without
turkeys was a clue that finding what I needed to prepare this meal would
be more difficult than I had imagined. With a week to go before the big
day, I placed an emergency call to my Aunt Joann, who mailed a turkey bag
from Texas via overnight express. I managed to find marshmallows by driving
to Germany and in Bern, I found the sweet potatoes. A friend coming from
London volunteered to bring the Jell-O. Luckily, I had brought back a can
of cranberry sauce in my suitcase the last time I was in America. This
would be an international meal in all respects. |
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Some things
I could not find like crème of mushroom soup and toasted onion rings.
Giving up the green bean casserole was not a big sacrifice.
After the ingredients
were collected, the remaining issue was who would make the gravy. I have
gotten by all the Thanksgivings in my life because someone else made the
gravy. Yet, none of the people coming knew how. My Swiss friends had never
even heard of gravy. This meal would be new to them. It was up to me.
The night before
Thanksgiving, I began to worry about the turkey. With the language barrier,
had the butcher really understood? The next morning, I was there when the
shop opened. Yes! The turkey had made it over the border. When the butcher
hauled it out from the back room, I was shocked to see blood around its
neck. When I ordered a fresh turkey, I had not expected to see evidence
of the deed.
Then at the
cash register, I got another shock. The twenty-two pounder weighed in at
over $5 a pound - $120. There is no such thing as a free turkey with minimum
purchase around here.
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To
cart the turkey home, my expat friend Margaret brought a dolly and the
butcher provided a cardboard box but no lid. The dolly wheels clacked conspicuously
on the cobblestones as we rolled the turkey to my place. People stopped
what they were doing to stare at the headless, monster-sized bird reclining
in the open cardboard box. With his wings flopped out, it looked as if
he was holding on to the sides of the box. We wheeled the turkey into my
apartment building, pressed the elevator button, and prayed none of the
neighbors would step out and start screaming.
The French
turkey had not come equipped with a pop out “I’m done” indicator, nor was
he pumped full of fluids to self baste. Instead of short fat legs, he came
with legs that were a foot long and quite sturdy. Margaret’s internal examination
brought another surprise. No giblets.
“They aren’t
here,’’ she said.
“Oh, they’re
in there somewhere,’’ I said. “Stick your arm in further and if not, try
the other end.”
No good. The
giblets had been left back in France.
Last hurdle,
and it was major. Would the gigantic turkey fit in my oven? It is not much
larger than an American microwave. As much as I did not like the idea,
if the door would not shut, someone was going to have to saw off the turkey’s
legs. After we stuffed the turkey and wrestled it into the turkey bag,
it was a tight fit, but the oven door closed.
Guests arrived.
I took their coats, handed them a glass of wine, and put them to work in
the kitchen. When the turkey was finished roasting, all the guests crowded
around for a peek. Some had never seen a turkey outside the zoo, much less
in someone’s oven.
At the table,
we toasted in the languages represented: “Bon Appetit” from the Canadians,
“En Guete” from the Swiss, and “Dig-In” from the Americans. |
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Swiss know a thing or two about delicate sauces. It was not possible to
mistake my thick, lumpy gravy for a fine French sauce. When I ladled some
on my mashed potatoes, the guests exchanged quizzical looks, and then a
couple people dabbed a little on the far outside rim of their plates. The
candied sweet potatoes were another matter. Everyone took second helpings.
Franzeska asked,
“What is this white stuff on top?
The Continentals
all paused with their forks mid-air to hear the answer. Some had never
heard of marshmallow. Across the table, Denise was discreetly poking her
quivering Jell-O. I whispered that it was gelatin and the objects suspended
like fossils frozen in a glacier were sections of mandarin oranges.
Even through
my Swiss friends did not know all the Thanksgiving traditions, everyone
managed to eat too much! Just like home.
So that was
my first Swiss Thanksgiving. When the holiday rolled around the following
year, we gathered again. As we settled down at the table laden with steaming
food, glasses poised for the toast, Stephan said,
“Hold it -
where is the gravy? We had gravy last year.”
I laughed,
“Yes we did, but you didn’t like the gravy we had last year.”
They all replied,
“But it is tradition.”
To contact
Bonnie Click Here |
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