We did it! Our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday was a success, and we did it all without a working oven at the American Home. Actually, it was a much less stressful affair than last year's dinner, and we served dinner almost on time (only 15 minutes late). We had an ample amount of food, and it all turned out really well.

We had a very traditional Thanksgiving menu year, featuring turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries (two types: sauce and orange-cranberry relish--my grandma's recipe), biscuits, tossed salad, orange-glazed carrots, maple-walnut green beans (with real Ohio maple syrup sent from the US), cheese balls with crackers, and two pumpkin pies. We were able to get most all of the ingredients we needed here in Vladimir. There was a minor panic last week when the Russian staff told us to run to the supermarket and buy the last four turkeys because, in typical Soviet fashion, who knew where there might be turkeys again (and they were right: the turkeys haven't been restocked). We needed steak sauce for the cheese balls, and Russia doesn't have your regular AI sauce, so I ended up buying something approximating meat sauce that was made in Japan. One teacher brought pumpkin filling with her from the US because she knew that it's impossible to buy here. Cranberries are available here no problem, but I asked my Russian students, and they told me that people don't usually make any kind of sauce with them but rather boil them to make compote.

Here's a few pictures of the preparation and the feast (we decided to pay tribute to America and buy some Bud--gotta love those global corporations):