The Day Before an American Holiday

Well it’s the day before Thanksgiving. Of course Thanksgiving is the celebration by Americans for things they are thankful for – family...friends...and the ability to trick Native Americans into feeding them before taking their land and going to war against them...Well as far as I know, there was no ocean to cross to arrive here and therefore no cold hard winter to get through without helpful indigenous people. So by that logic, family and friends are not enough of a reason to have a holiday.
Ok ok all kidding and political reprimand aside, it is still Wednesday – the most traveled day of the year in America, as well as the biggest (grocery) shopping day. So I decided to take part. Since I will actually be going to a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I needed to get ingredients to make Paula Dean’s Pumpkin Pie. In order to do this, I had to go to the big supermarket since the one by my house does not have many of the ingredients I need. So after about an hour of attempting to find the right keys to my bike, figuring out how to unlock it, finding a wrench to lower the seat, and scraping the rust off of the seat bar so that it could be lowered, I was on my way. Of course the bike was still a little too big, and the gears don’t connect right away so I kind of ran into things when I was first starting up, but I think I’m getting the hang of it now. I was all set in my directions as it was pretty straight forward…until I came to a detour in the road and I got pretty severely lost. After being yelled at in Dutch by another woman, and making several U-turns, I found my way back to the street I was supposed to be on. Only one U-turn later (when I veered into a no-bike housing complex instead of the bike path across the street,) I found the Albert Heijn supermarket!
Once inside I set upon finding the ingredients I needed while cursing myself for not translating them from English before I came. Unfortunately I also didn’t even think about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to find canned (or fresh) pumpkin anywhere. So I called Lily who was able to send me the ingredients to make Peach Cobbler instead, which is not as traditional, but just as delicious. It ended up being better anyway because here, cream cheese and graham crackers are both imported and therefore, cost way more than they should, whereas canned peaches are still cheap and easy.
So I got home making a mental note to figure out how the basket goes onto the bike, unloaded my groceries and had a bowl of delicious homemade soup. I don’t need to make the cobbler until tomorrow so I’ve decided to spend the rest of the day straightening up the two houses, and reorganizing mine. I’ve also made the discovery that youtube has ALL the episodes of Cheers and since I recently fell in love with Frasier, which is it’s spin off, I figured I’d try watching that first. Plus it’s an American TV Institution. Plus sometimes you wanna go where every body knows your name.
So for all you surviving the grapevine, standing in line at Safeway, or elbow deep in a hollow turkey, Happy Day-Before-Thanksgiving…I miss it all.

Word of the Day: pompoentaart - pumpkin pie