Thanksgiving, albeit a little late, seemed to me to be a good place to re-start the blog after getting back to Italy. The last several months have been difficult and I wanted to let everyone know that I’m thankful for all of the well wishes, thoughtful notes, and encouragement from friends, family, and extended family alike. The next few months, especially the holidays, will be hard this year but we’ll be taking it one day at a time. Thank you all for the support, past, present, and future.
So something I didn’t really put a lot of thought into, though I “knew” as we moved overseas is that while some holidays like Christmas are somewhat universal other holidays are not. I’ve now had two experiences with this concerning Thanksgiving. While living in the Northwest Amy and I visited Vancouver, Canada for one of my birthdays (which is in the end of October) and as we were walking around the city it blew us away that everything was closed and almost nobody was out walking around. One of the few people we ran into was a homeless guy who asked for change. We hadn’t actually gotten any Canadian cash yet so we had nothing to offer and in true Canadian fashion he thanked us anyway and then proceeded to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving. Uh…yeah, you too, Happy Thanksgiving dude…in October. As we walked away I looked at my phone and considered what time it was. Just how early did this guy start to be so plastered that he doesn’t even know what month he’s in? As I rolled this around in my head for a minute that little compassionate voice I carry around in my head says, “Hey stupid, you’re in another country. It actually could be Thanksgiving here, which might account for everything being closed and no one being around…” (He’s a handy voice to have around, If only he were a little faster and not so rude. Note to inner self: We’re going to talk later but not out loud, it makes us look weird.)
In Italy it’s completely different, the Thanksgiving holiday doesn’t exist. As a matter of fact I don’t think they have any equivalent holiday (we asked some Italians to confirm this). The idea itself they seem to like but their conception of what it is can get a little mashed together as most of what they know comes from movies and International News (this should scare you). So on average they see it as a day families get together to eat, and this is an actual quote, “a big chicken”, and watch sports on TV followed by a ritual of stampeding with and subsequently beating up perfect strangers at shopping centers over small home appliances ( I suppose that’s fair enough, I did see that toaster oven first Mrs “red sweater and pajama bottoms”). So as they don’t have such a holiday, the fourth Thursday in November is just another Thursday. Fortunately, with so many American’s here in the area Boeing is gracious enough to cater a get together for those of us that are here, and if I may say so myself they do it exceedingly well…just on Friday instead.
The dinner was held at Masseria Martuccio (you can click here to see the website):
Little gems like this seem to be hidden practically everywhere in Southern Italy. You’re not going to just “accidentally” find this place driving around. To be perfectly honest we had a hard time finding it on purpose…with directions. In my defense a lot of people had the same problem. Something we have come to find is that because of how they do addresses here (which to me is still utterly confusing) GPS tends to just get you close, unless it’s something really big (think Costco, which we don’t have…). Anyway, we pulled up to the wrong place at the same time as one of the Italians. We found we were looking for the same place and he went inside of this little restaurant to ask them where the other place was (awkward) and then we followed them there. Needless to say we were impressed. I would have put a picture that I took of the place but I couldn’t find a good spot to take it all in in just one picture.
While this was a Boeing event, Thanksgiving dinner was definitely done Italian style. Arriving at 7 pm didn’t mean you started dinner. It meant you had some appetizers and mingling with people. Since I have been gone for a few months Amy took me around and introduced me to a lot of people (some of which I had already met a few months ago and still said “nice to meet you” which makes me look a tad slow…oops). To all of them I apologize in advance that I won’t likely remember your names, it’s not personal, It’s taken years of work just to remember my own. During this little pre-dinner session I pulled off something I was informed would likely never happen to me. As we were picking out a table to sit at a couple walked over to us and began speaking in Italian to me and were really confused when I gave them that sad but unmistakable “I have no idea what you’re saying – dog at a new dish” look. They thought I was Italian! HA! Apparently a pair of khaki pants, blue dress shirt, black leather jacket and dress shoes blends me in. I’m going to have to remember that one. Of course, this means I have to dress up to pull it off, so it’ll never happen again…on purpose anyway.
The food itself did have an Italian flare. It was done in courses as is the custom here. The first thing? Ravioli in a Pumpkin sauce. I can see your face from here, it’s not as bad as it sounds. As a matter of fact it was pretty delicious, but since we had heard there was actual turkey coming we didn’t ask for seconds. Then it finally came, baked Turkey, as close as they could get it to how we would do it in the States. It was a fantastic piece of home. The side dishes, while good, where a bit of a wild card though. The stuffing wasn’t something I recognized (kinda crouton-like) but it was decent. The real thing of beauty though were the creamed potatoes. Those they did nearly perfect. We did have a discussion at our table about whether it was mashed potatoes or creamed. One of the fella’s from the Northwest shook his head and jokingly said “Southerner’s”. I told him “Well, nobody’s perfect. You can keep calling it mashed potatoes all you like, we won’t hold it against you.” Burn, if I do say so myself. Then I remembered that I was speaking to one of Amy’s co-workers and hoped I hadn’t just gotten her work for the next few weekends. The consensus though was that they were good enough for seconds, but what do you call them to ask for more? Eventually Mr “Mashed” potatoes asked for “patata pulvarizze” and they knew instantly what he meant but he had essentially just asked for pulverized potatoes. I think I like that one better, I may replace “creamed” with that, it’s more manly. (a side note, we were informed by an Italian that they would call it “patate puree”. Now you can all sleep soundly knowing the answer to this great mystery). Anyway, we all ate our fill and even got to talk a little bit to some Italians about what Thanksgiving was in terms of the holiday and its history, and also trying our best to explain black Friday (agreeing with them that it seems kind of insane)
Another interesting part of not having Thanksgiving here is there isn’t a holiday just before Christmas so the decorations start going up a lot earlier here than they typically do back home. After seeing all the lights up and hearing Christmas music (an Italian version of White Christmas is…interesting, yeah I’ll go with that word) we got ourselves a small Christmas tree and some decorations to enjoy some Christmas cheer.
We hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving with family and friends, and I’ll be posting again soon. Merry Christmas!
Very Interesting. I would love to have been a little bird at that dinner not a “Big Chicken”. lol I love you guys, keep the humor going. I love it! Aunt Joan