Thanksgiving Celebration

Today was the 16th of November, and instead of teaching at School practicum, we had a Peace Corps celebration of Thanksgiving here. This consisted of two groups of us cooking different “Thanksgiving” foods. Then the Peace Corps staff provided some traditional Indonesian foods as well, and we had a meal.

My group made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, with marshmallow, green bean casserole, and roasted carrots with Parmesan. I was sort of the “ head chef“ of our group because I had the most cooking experience and on the fly cooking experience, I guess. Because typical Indonesian homes do not have ovens we had to figure out how to cook everything on the stove top. This provided a bit of a challenge, because three out of our four dishes are typically either entirely cooked in the oven or finished in the oven. We ended up making not necessarily a full green bean casserole, but green bean casserole inspired dish. We sautéed green beans with garlic and onion in a pan and then added some mushroom soup that they had in packets and then we were able to put in some Parmesan cheese and then also get the, typical fried onions to top it. It ended up being really good and so did the rest of the stuff.

My favorite was definitely the mashed potatoes and I wish we had more of them. We only had 100 K in rupiah (sounds like a lot but isn't with conversion) which to buy four dishes worth of things is not really a lot. The mashed potatoes were made by sautéing garlic and onion and adding that to the mashed potatoes along with butter and Parmesan cheese. Typically there would be milk in there but we didn’t have any. They were super flavorful and delicious and they’re definitely gonna be something I make when I miss home.

The roasted carrots with Parmesan cheese were delicious as well. The main struggle with that was getting the carrots to soften up well at the same time not burning on the stove Top.

The sweet potatoes with marshmallows were probably my least favorite just because I’m not a fan of sweet potatoes, but they were done really well. We ended up mashing them and then reheating them on the oven where we could put a lid on and melt the marshmallows, the other members definitely like them. The other group made fried chicken, corn on the cob, and mac & cheese. This was all very good and delicious and a great meal. We got to share Thanksgiving and traditions with the Peace Corps staff and we went around the room and said what we were all thankful for and I think it was a really fun time to just try different things. We got to try a bunch of Indonesian foods and they got to try American foods and we got to have a little reminder of home. I hope will be able to do this again in the future because I really enjoyed it and I’m glad I got to do this cooking because now I know how easy it is to make some of the foods or some variation of the foods that I like from home.