Every fall, as Asturias celebrates it’s amagüestu and the aroma of roasted chestnuts fills the air calling for a glass of sidra dulce, thoughts of home come to mind. And home, at this moment and place, to many of us means family gatherings on Thanksgiving.
By this time, students are over the half-way mark of their stay and possibly on a roller coaster ride down one of the “dips” in the intercultural adjustment cycle. It is the perfect moment to start planning for our own annual Thankgiving feast!
We have come a long way since our first Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant where we were served stewed turkey, 
French fries and sautéed pimentos. This charming fiasco was followed by years during which each student received their individual homemade pumpkin mini pie. With time, our list of “subscribers” grew to include professors, staff members, service providers, neighbors and significant others of the AHA center.
As pumkin pie is no substitute for a full Thanksgiving meal, we finally settled into our present routine of holding a hybrid home cooked/restaurant group meal. Enthusiam and anticipation always reign high but preparing the traditional fare in Oviedo is no easy feat. And this is because Asturian arandanos are not a good substitute for cranberries, they’ve never heard of canned pumpkin here and the local turkeys only come in small sizes. We rose to the challenge armed with good intentions and creativity and the end result was a series of tasty, made from scratch versions of the students’ holiday favorites.
Here’s our secret: We make our own cranberry sauce from IKEA lingonberry conserve, adding a good shot of Carmen’s homemade licor de guindas, Worcestershire sauce, a 
dab of sweet butter and pinch of salt. Weeks before the dinner, we beginning steaming enormous amounts of fresh pumpkin and freezing it (for you know what). At the same time we industriously dice our leftover bread, oven dry it and store it in used ginger cookie cans from IKEA (we use the ginger thins for our crumb crust and believe in recyling). Our stuffing is made from many “bread” traditions and has a “global” taste that is different from year to year.
As regards the turkey, we have frankly thrown the towel on doing the whole bird and settled instead on roasted breasts prepared at Kin’s restaurant. 
Kin’s also makes the natural mashed potatoes and gravy, and in recent years, bakes the pumpkin pies. Kin’s has hosted our Thanksgiving dinner for several years now and is very open to our bringing additional side dishes such as the stuffing, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. Mila, the owner, often makes an extra amounts of each dish which find themselves mysteriously on the next day menú del día.
Finally the day comes, everyone decks out in their best “duds” and we sit down at the table to enjoy the meal and the company. Earlier, in the intercultural class, we are all humbled by watching The Miniature Earth Proyect’s clip “If the World was a Village” and understand the true spirit of this great American holiday.
Note: On occassion when Thanksgiving Day find s us on excursion , we have still managed to celebrate it properly, albeit with a Mexican twist. ¡Eso sí, sin que falte el pastel de calabaza!
