When I got back to Paraguay on Tuesday, I was a little bit sad about missing Thanksgiving back home. While all of my friends and family were bustling about making provisions for the autumnal feast, I was trying to reacclimatize to the tropical heat and a steady diet of empanadas. So when I made it back to Fundación Paraguaya on Thursday morning, most of my colleagues were pretty surprised that I was missing "Día de acción de gracias" (as they say in Spanish)...at which point I may have rather foolishly offered to host a thanksgiving dinner for my Paraguayan friends. Since this was already going to be a rather unconventional affair, we agreed that having it actually on Thanksgiving day proper was not essential...and postponed for Saturday evening when people had a bit more free time. And the guest list continued to grow to include Modesta and Lucia (my friends from home), Doña Cristina and Don Nelson (friends of Lucia that have traveled widely in the United States and were thrilled about the invitation), Luz and her husband (who own the bookstore downstairs from me). Add the Fundación Paraguaya people, and suddenly my Thanksgiving was beginning to resemble the crazy epicurean adventure for 20+ people that I was used to hosting in Chicago. Now...to find a turkey...
The shopping adventure for Thanksgiving fare began on Saturday morning at 5:45am. Modesta wanted to take a trip to Argentina to visit the local equivalent of Costco...an enormous Quonset-hut in Puerto Yguazú where a lot of Paraguayans go to buy things in bulk in order to sell across the border in their stores in Ciudad del Este. I got some of the essentials (butter, flour, cream)...but still no turkey. So we stopped at a large Brazilian grocery store on the way home. Luckily, turkey is traditional Brazilian fare for Christmas, and SCORE! we found an enormous 10kg (read 22lb) bird. The one problem being that it was still partially frozen...and Thanksgiving just hours away! 11am, we loaded the beast (along with other traditional trappings like potatoes, yams, carrots, rosemary, french bread for stuffing, walnuts, &c) in the car and headed home. Oh no! Traffic on the bridge was a hopeless tangle. As we sat in the sweltering car, all I could hope was that the 95+ degree head was thawing the frozen turkey in the trunk. And that transitively, the frozen turkey was keeping my butter and cream from completely vaporizing. As we inched along Modesta yelled insults at the taxis and transport vans that were trying to cut the line by backing up along the last exit ramp in an effort to merge at the beginning on the line. We squeezed around a hapless taxi that had been completely bisected by a semi-truck (probably while doing something idiotic while trying to merge)...made it to the bridge...and home by 1pm (a two hour wait to go less than a mile...that's worse than Los Angeles traffic!). To my dismay, the butter was indeed a puddle (despite being next to the turkey), and the turkey was still an ice brick (despite being in a hot car for two hours). Yikes!
Got the turkey stuffed and in the oven by 3 (after managing to extract the still-frozen giblets), which seemed like it would be mostly on-time for 8pm dinner. Between the roasting turkey and the many boiling and bubbling pots on the stove, the ambient temperature rose from 95+ to what felt like 130+...soon I was in running shorts and a sports bra while madly cooking away. By about 5:30pm a thunderstorm rolled through, which at least brought the temperature down. But it took the power with it...so I put on my headlamp and kept cooking in the twilight. Good thing I've got a gas stove!
Without a meat thermometer I had no idea when the turkey was done but it came with a little red cook-o-meter that was supposed to pop up once it reached the desired temp. Which it did, right on time at 8pm. Modesta offered to pull her big table onto the patio downstairs, and guests started arriving at 8:30/9ish. Thanksgiving in the balmy tropical night--not terribly traditional, but sure was fun! (p.s. Lucia left and Modesta right).
Dinner guests *finally* went home at 1am and I collapsed in bed, completely spent. But my Thanksgiving guests seemed to have quite enjoyed themselves...evidenced by the fact that despite the turkey being a bit dry (I was terrified of under-cooking it, especially since it went in the oven partially frozen!) there was virtually no leftovers. Excellent!
Sunday I was looking forward to doing some cleaning (and recuperating). But Lucia called me at around 9:30 and told me that two of our dinner guests--Doña Cristina and her husband Don Nelso--had renewed their offer from the night before to take us out to their farm where they spent weekends "in the country." I'd been meaning to do some "deep hanging out" with Doña Cristina since she has worked in credit and finance for the last 20 years and seems like the would be a really important contact for my research here. So 9 hours on the farm 'tis. Which was great. Traditional grill-o-meat, boat dock on the Acaray river and a leisurely swim (which may or may not give me a terrible skin disease, worms, of both) in borrowed spandex shorts and a shirt from the groundskeeper's 11 year old daughter. The teenagers downriver were pretty excited to have a captive audience for their waterskiing stunts...I almost took them up on their offer to strap on the skis but settled for some time in the boat instead (seemed like a much safer bet). Another afternoon storm cooled things off, which didn't seem to bother the swimmers much. Home by 8 and time to collapse. Making friends with the natives is hard work!!
No comments:
Post a Comment