Cornuccopia

Reporting in here at the close of a long, relaxing weekend that started with a classic all-American Turkey Day, continued with a day off of preschool due to local swine flu concerns, kept on going with Tajikistan's idiosyncratic celebration of Eid al-Adha on Saturday (one day later than the rest of the Muslim world -- and here they call it Qurban). After a rainy Saturday Eid, we had a glorious, sunny Sunday with a fancy breakfast and a walk in the Botanical Gardens. And today, Tajikistan's public holiday in honor of Eid, the 3 of us took our first long drive of the season, into Takob valley for a romp in the snow!

Thanksgiving was a real delight -- a buffet laden with a bounty of dishes at the home of our good friends, shared with a bunch of other good friends. Several kinds of stuffing, a corn pudding, a beef fillet, gravies both meat-based and vegetarian, baked sweet potatoes topped with golden-brown marshmallows, and two cranberry sauces. All of that was accompanied by the meat carved off a 23-pound monster of a Butterball turkey, which was shipped into Central Asia via Bishkek (Manas Air Base), detoured through Tashkent, and then afforded a special US Embassy escort to Dushanbe (frosty relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan make the connection much less realistic than it ought to be).

We were the ones responsible for the bird. Since I guess up to now I'd never been solely responsible for the turkey on Thanksgiving, I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. Least daunting of all was the roasting: receiving the fully frozen bird on Monday and given a defrosting schedule of 4 pounds per day in the fridge didn't get us quite all the way to Thursday. A cold water bath for the turkey on Wednesday evening got us the remainder of the way to thawed.

Prep on Thursday morning, despite Dan's protests, and roasting pan into the oven at 10:45AM still had us scrambling at a quarter to 5 to get the turkey to our hosts' house in an attempt to stick to the projected 5pm call to table. We sat down late, but I think we were not the only reason, and anyway, the freely flowing wine and "White Ladies" (something involving enough lemon juice to mask the taste of gin) and blue-cheese stuffed dates kept the rest of the other guests at bay almost the whole time.

And then there was dessert! So many pies, let me see if I can remember: apple, sweet potato, two pumpkins (one with "vodka crust"), chocolate pecan.... and something else I'm forgetting. As well as turkey-shaped sugar cookies, thanks to the smallest of our hosts.

It was a great holiday in Dushanbe!