Turkey recovery

The floors are mopped, the oven's cleaned, the fridge is packed with leftovers. There are empty bottles and a turkey carcass on the balcony, and there's a splatter of wine on the wall. It was a good party. I won't bore you by talking about how chunks of sweet potato stuck to my broom this morning, but I will give you some highlights of our three part extravaganza.

1. Turkey Bowl, Hannover edition - 16 players showed up to the unnamed grassy park full of mole-holes. The Indians wore red and the Pilgrims wore black. Some coaching from the North Americans, some frustration from the Europeans, some running in circles by the Australians... and they got the hang of it and had a good time.  Final results? The Indians won the first game, probably, and the Pilgrims seemed to win the second game but no one is really sure. Here are some photos of the event, which I took in the first half before running (literally) home to put the turkey in the oven.

2. Food. Lots of it. Lots of people to eat it too. The happy, local, free-running hippie turkey was 6.7 kilos, which is almost 15 lbs. I had to put it in diagonally and its ankle bones still touched the wall of the oven. And it was delicious. So was the turkey that Brian cooked on the grill. So were the 58 side dishes that our guests brought. We managed to fit everyone - cozy but relatively comfortable - into the living room to eat. It felt like a real holiday because there was an obscene amount of food, multiple conversations, too many desserts, a baby to pass around, a happy food coma after dinner and football playing in the other room. True, the guests were not related to me, but they were so excited to be a part of the feast (who thought that sweet potatoes were exotic?) that it felt pretty special.

3. Party. What in our minds would be a separate and distinct part of the evening didn't really turn out that way. We'd planned to put food away by that point, move tables around and turn up the music. None of that really happened. About 15 more people came and the feast continued as they ate the food that was still out from dinner. We did manage to turn up the music and people seemed to have a good time, even if we were all too full to have a crazy, wild party.

And that was Thanksgiving. We are left with enough food for a week and enough wine bottles to last until spring. Now I just need to find some paint to fix that stain on the wall.