Deciding to Host
After moving abroad, I knew my husband and I couldn’t return to the U.S. for every holiday. Thanksgiving is one that fell through the cracks, so it would be spent in Sweden. Since we’d be here, it was the perfect way to share in the celebration and host an American Thanksgiving for the Europeans we’ve befriended.
The thing is, we both had never hosted this big of a cooking undertaking. I was also vegetarian for 8 years back in the States so I had never even cooked a turkey or any meat dishes. So finding and cooking a whole turkey was something completely new to us. And spoiler, it was actually fun.
Prepping the Menu
My husband and I are from the US South, so our Thanksgiving had a bit more of a Southern feel to it. These foods aren’t necessarily what I grew up eating, but the foods I was culturally surrounded by and were popular.
Here is the list of items we planned on cooking. We omitted many of the casseroles like sweet potato, green bean, and so on simply because they aren’t my favorite.
- Turkey
- Stuffing
- Gravy
- Cornbread
- Mac and cheese
- Mashed potatoes
- Roasted mushrooms
- Roasted Carrots
- Corn
- Southern sweet tea
- Apple or pumpkin pie
Trying to Find American Foods in Sweden
One of the biggest obstacles was finding most of these items/ ingredients at our Swedish grocery stores. Turkey is native to North America, and Europe banned most meat products from the US, so we were concerned about whether we’d find one. We ended up going to a bigger grocery store and it somehow had a small section of frozen turkeys…SCORE. We got the biggest one we could find, a 12 lb bird, and it ended up being $40. It was almost too big to fit in our small European fridge.
Now, another obstacle…finding corn meal for the cornbread and canned pumpkin for a pumpkin pie. After going to three different grocery stores, we weren’t able to find either. But it’s fine, and I pivoted to making homemade focaccia, and someone else made the pie. The person who made the pie already had pumpkin pie spice from the US, and she used squash instead of a pumpkin. I gotta say it still tasted good, obviously not the same, but it did the job.
Thanksgiving Day with Europeans
When the day came around, I made a schedule of what needed stovetop time and oven time. Our oven is small compared to U.S. ovens so this was essential to prep. I also calculated what items would be the longest to cook. We decided the turkey needed to be cooked last to be served hot and fresh.
We had 12 people from all over Europe and even Canada come to celebrate with us. Most had never celebrated a Thanksgiving and only slightly heard about what it was and why it was celebrated. Therefore, they arrived excited to celebrate for their first time. We grabbed our food, and went around in a circle to say what everyone was thankful for this year (a classic tradition). Everyone loved the different kinds of food besides the sweet tea. Most hated it, a guy from Italy even spit it out, haha. People even got a second wind and ate more later in the night. They stayed till 1 AM talking and just being together.
I would say hosting our first Thanksgiving, especially since it was in Europe was a huge success. We loved sharing our traditions with new people and seeing it from a new lens. It makes you reflect on your own culture and find a newfound appreciation for it.
