a day early

in case you didn't know already, thanksgiving is an american holiday. by which i mean they don't celebrate it in england. intellectually, i knew this, but when the stores went from late summer/halloween to christmas decor overnight, it blew my socks off. or would have if i wore socks. it only got worse as november progressed, and there was no trace of turkeys, potatoes, or pilgrims. and as if that weren't bad enough, they don't even sell pumpkins here!
jeff and i looked to our ward members for some kind of consolation and found that most of them cope by going to scotland, norway, or italy for the week...less helpful.
so we started plotting.
to begin with, we made wednesday the new thursday, because jeff doesn't have class on wednesdays. next, we invited two of jeff's byu friends who are also studying here and are equally impoverished to join us. because what's the point of making a cool dinner if no one is there to admire it?
then, we bought a chicken.
we don't have a meat thermometer, or room in our oven for a turkey, but i saw a method for slow-cooking a whole chicken that looked simple enough. naturally, i had to make things harder than they were meant to be, and bought a chicken that was too large.

but, jeff fidgeted with the thing and eventually came up with something that worked beautifully:

add to that some mashed potatoes, sauted green beans, stuffing from a utah care package, apple crisp, and chocolate ice cream and you have thanksgiving dinner for four home-hungry americans.
in lieu of giving you a picture of our green beans, here's a picture of our kitchen, complete with its 2.5 square feet of counter-space, now covered in post-meal dishes.

the blue thing at the bottom there is our couch cushion, covered with some towels and a blanket, which served as our table because we only have two chairs.

after peter and brian left, we cleaned up a bit and fed paige some mashed potatoes in her new bib. i promise she was smiling until the flash went off.

thankfully, all the leftovers fit in our tiny fridge! yay thanksgiving!