Thanksgiving Prep

Thanksgiving is already here again.  Well, it was actually last week in the USA but I'm celebrating it tomorrow.  Since Thanksgiving isn't a Czech holiday I normally host a Thanksgiving party on the Saturday after.  However, this year, for several reasons, it worked out better to wait a week.  Plus, it's not really like people here have noticed it's a week later than normal.

This year's boxes from Steven and Mom

Yeah for my annual Thanksgiving care packages!!  I normally get packages from Mom & Dad, in Prescott, and from Steven & Michal, in Atlanta, on my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Which is great and they are so much fun to get.  But my favorite care packages are the ones I get at Thanksgiving because the ingredients are necessary in order to pull off a traditional turkey day fest here in Brno.

My German care package

This year, I even received a Thanksgiving/Christmas pack from Claudia's mom in Berlin.  It even came with a little Krteček advent calendar which is for my nephew in California.

Getting ready for this year's Thanksgiving has been a bit more stressful than the previous three years.  The biggest issue has been the turkey.  Last year's turkey was 14 kg (31 lb) was way too big.  So rather than deal with the halal shop again I decided to go back to our normal place in Židlochovice.  So two weeks ago I placed an order for a 10 kg (22 lb) bird.  They told me no problem and they took down my mobile number when I called them.

For some reason, I just knew that I should reconfirm everything with them again.  So yesterday, a friend called to check and they said everything was fine and they had my 7 kg (14.5 lb) turkey ready.  We reminded them that the order was for a 10 kg bird and their response was "yes, but we received small turkeys so it is 7 kg".  When asked why they didn't call to let me know about the problem their response was "what good would calling have done, the turkey is still only going to be 7 kg".  Uuuggghhh!!!!  I swear that at times Czech (nonexistent) customer service just makes me want to stick a fork in my eye.

This year's tiny turkey

At least I found out about the size issue yesterday so I had time to come up with Plan B.  Had I gotten this surprise when we went to pick it up today I'm sure my head would have spun around three times.  Although today they had a possible solution.  I could either have my 7 kg turkey or take a 15 kg (33 lb) turkey.  I elected to go with the 7 kg bird and thanks to "Plan B" we are also going to have a 5 kg  (11 lb) ham as well.  I'm sure that there will be plenty of food for the 28 people coming to my flat for turkey day tomorrow.  And the good news is that 7 kg won't take as long to cook so I don't have to get up at 5:30 AM to put it in the oven.  Which is good news because tonight I'm off to attend our department's Christmas party.  Let's hope that it isn't too late of a night because I still have lots more cooking to do tomorrow.