Our 2nd Thanksgiving in India

We've had a fun week preparing for and celebrating Thanksgiving with our team here! 

With 18 of us here, plus 2 friends visiting from America, plus 1 other friend who lives here in the city, we had 21 adults + 2 children to feed! Good thing there were LOTS of girls to divide and conquer the cooking! I honestly think cooking was less stressful for me this year even than last year when we were only cooking for 11, because I was responsible for WAY fewer things!

We put the boys in charge of picking up the rotisserie chickens and bringing the pop :)

It was a feast to be sure...maybe a little overboard, but we want Thanksgiving to feel special and like home for everyone, so we make any and all dishes that any person from our team wants to have in order for it to really feel like traditional Thanksgiving. That took some planning ahead and we had some Thanksgiving food items (think french onions for green bean casserole or stuffing mixes or turkey gravy packets) sent over in a suitcase back in June. When you have 18 different people with different family traditions, it makes for a lot of food! Just for fun, here was our menu this year:

Rotisserie Chicken (no messing with expensive, low quality turkey for us)

Mashed potatoes

Gravy

Creamed corn

Cheesy potato casserole

Green bean casserole

Bacon wrapped green bean bundles

Sweet potato casserole

Cheesy broccoli and rice casserole

Stuffing

Crescent rolls

Zwiebach (another kind of special roll)

Veggie tray

Fruit salad

Deviled eggs

Pumpkin pie

Apple tarts

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Cake and Oreo balls

Strawberry jello pretzel salad

Apple cider

Homemade peppermint mochas

Coffee :)

I told you it was a feast! In our defense, between Thanksgiving day and the day after Thanksgiving, we ate almost all of the leftovers...ironically we have the most of the chicken still leftover :)

The food was delicious, and it was such a fun time to just hang out with our India family.
Of course we missed our families back home, but that was made easier by the fact that we'll see them in less than a week when we go back to America for a few months! (4 days left on the countdown!)

We ate, talked, laughed, played games, ate again, watched Christmas movies, and just had a great time together. And of course we spent the whole day after Thanksgiving together as well, playing outside, eating leftovers, hanging out, and watching the movie Million Dollar Arm together. Emphasis on TOGETHER - I'm so grateful to have so many people here to be together with!
I'm really thankful for this crew!

Happy Thanksgiving!