Making Up Thanksgiving as She Went Along

Kudos to Ms. Lyall for going against the grain of English cooking. Even if the US is not a country of refined taste and haute cuisine, it is better than the English boiled beef and vegetables, and eggs fried in pork fat. Happy Thanksgiving!

Very nice to remember your friend on Thanksgiving! Where would we be without out friends (and family).

What wonderful memories of expat life, thank you for reminding me of mine. My first Indian Thanksgiving was 2012. A small group of Americans gathered at one of our homes to celebrate the holiday. We were each responsible for bringing something to the dinner. One found a real turkey. Another found pumpkin for a pie. I was surprised to stumble onto cranberries at Nature's Basket. The bright bowl of relish made the table, it was truly Thanksgiving. Thank you for fond memories!

It had never occurred to me it would be hard to find the Thanksgiving shopping list. It was easy in Beograd if you asked the farmers in the weekly market to bring what you wanted the next week. Country life and small farms! Not sure how we got the cranberries. Never had creamed onions even at home tho. Disgusting glop.

Love this!

I am doing my 14th Thanksgiving in England this year. And I relate to much of what Sarah Lyall says. (I, too, have ditched creamed onions -- I do glazed ones, instead. And, sweet potatoes are baked with root vegetables and gorgonzola.) I have to call my butcher in October to make sure there will be a turkey ready for the fourth Thursday in November. I always insist that our son take the day off from school and that we celebrate on the exact day. I wanted to get across to him the significance of the the holiday. What I have found is that since no one has anywhere else to go -- no obligatory year at the in-laws' or a desire to host it themselves -- if I invite English friends one year, they plan to come the next. So there will be 22 of us sitting down together. We always read Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp's marvellous book 'Giving Thanks' as a reminder that Thanks-giving was present in America long before the pilgrims.

@Sara, this is a great article. i am as well not a good cook or rarely have emphasis on food. I'm happy with whatever is being served. but we often host Thanksgiving meal and I enjoy the meaningful conversations during thanksgiving meal. So a few years ago, we started a tradition that we engage the guests with meaningful and relevant content. The firs few years I made a small pamphlet for each guest so we can read and engage in thought provoking conversations. Last year, i finally published my book Make Your Thanksgiving Meaningful, it is an inspirational guide to engage guests during the Thanksgiving celebration. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979686122 Additionally, it provides thought-provoking questions to reflect and create an interactive and meaningful experience. Also, the book offers tools and techniques of how to strengthen your relationships. Lastly, you may also dedicate the book with gratitude to someone special in your life. The book connects the Thanksgiving story to relevant concepts about gratitude, appreciation, reciprocity, happiness, and embracing others to our lives. I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Lea

This took me back to my year abroad in Freiburg, Germany in 1977. As grad students, we struggled not only with finding ingredients, but also with lack of money and a proper kitchen. An English friend loaned us a kitchen, somebody’s mom mailed a can of Libby’s pumpkin, and we made do with a goose and some lingonberries. Our fellow foreign student friends were happy to skip classes on a (to them) random Thursday and eat an elaborate meal. For all of us Yanks, it was our first time to pull off a Thanksgiving mea, but it could not have been better.

After reading Sarah Lyall’s turkey tale, I don’t think I’ll ever think of The Little Pie Company or its heavenly sour cream apple pie quite the same way. I’ll think of friendship and two forks and a loss that still aches.

I rarely comment but loved this story. Really touched me.

"Who cared? We made it up as we went along." Yes, tradition can be anything we personally make it to be. Don't like turkey? Cook your favorite, whatever it may be. Thanksgiving is about being thankful.

I have lived in the UK for 20 years and made Thanksgiving dinner most of those years, except 1 year visiting the US and a few years at the home of an American friend, only missing out entirely the year I was in Denmark on business. Like others who have commented, I invite a mixture of American expats and British friends (and others -- last year one of my guests was a Swedish expat married to a South African who lives permanently in London). My British friends all love Thanksgiving and are actually more regular attendees than the expats. Unlike Sarah, I don't tend to eschew tradition. There are a few things where I have created my own traditions (making cranberry sauce because it used to be harder to find than fresh cranberries, even though my family tradition was for Ocean Spray from a can), but once created, I tend to stick to them. There were a couple of years where gluten-free guests meant that I made wild rice stuffing rather than bread-based, but no one really liked it and the vast amount of leftovers went uneaten. When I switched back to the more traditional (to me), it flew off the table. This year, I have about 18 guests who have RSVP'd already and there are always last minute additions and drop outs, so I won't really know until the 23rd who's coming. Happy Thanksgiving all!

i've done thanksgiving many times in rome, where i live. luckily the quality of ingredients is tops: the tachino (turkey) is free-range, the cornbread made from polenta, sweet potatoes available at the asian market, etc. the only difficulties were cranberries and wild rice. i found the rice at an organic food shop but usually have to have my friends smuggle in the cranberries from the US. other than that, my experience has been that my expat friends love it but my italian friends love it even more!

As an American who's lived in and around London for a quarter of a century, I enjoy Thanksgiving every year with some combination of ex-pat and local friends, but have yet to meet one Brit who truly enjoys pumpkin pie! But the day just isn't quite the same without the Macy's Parade.

Sarah Lyall's tale of T'day in London took me farther afield --to 11/73, which I spent in Eilat, Israel, with my future husband. Being so far from home invested it with far greater significance: I was going to be READY! I had my mom airmail me a bag of fresh cranberries (how they made it through Customs I have no idea), and--in a combination of his bad French and my almost nonexistent Hebrew--ordered a "small" turkey from a local (kosher, of course) butcher, which he promised to bring from Jerusalem. Excellent sweet potatoes, stuffing ingredients, etc., were no problem. On the appointed day, I collected my bird--a 17 lb monster I was assured was "le plus petit dinde" in the country. It was also graced by so many pinfeathers around its ankles that it had the aspect of a Percheron, but sighing (and shlepping) heavily, I took it home and set to work. Having hefted it into the sink, I had the atavistic idea that "singeing" might help, so lighted and applied a rolled-up Jerusalem Post before wielding my eyebrow tweezers--for several hours. (It also barely fit into my small oven, and as a devoted baster, I date later back problems to it.) The meal was delicious, our guests pronounced themselves pleased, as I was (not to say groggy). The next day's mail brought a letter from my mom, asking how our T'day had gone and describing the family's. Alas, I'd checked everything but the calendar, and we'd celebrated on 11/29 instead of 11/22--proving yet again it's the thought that counts!

This brought back memories of Thanksgiving in Paris , 1969. We couldn't find a whole dinde, but did manage to rustle up a half one. Stuffed the wing-pit. Paid through the nose for a can of cranberry sauce at Fauchon. The motley crew of us that took to the table that day had a grand time. I think about that meal every Thanksgiving.

The Little Pie Company's sour-cream apple pie is the best. How I wish the Times would publish the recipe.

Greatly enjoyed her memories. Reminded me of Thanksgiving in Paris in 1958. Only turkey (Dinde) to be had was from Fouchon for about $75 in those days!!!! We passed and just did a bit of reminiscing on the day. BUT WHERE IS THAT FABULOUS RECIPE FOR APPLE SOUR CREAM PIE ????? Please !!!!

Thanks for that, Sarah. In the 13+ years I've been living in the UK we've celebrated Thanksgiving variously with local English friends, who are always thrilled to be invited, and/or with other Amurrican expats, with whom we can more easily laugh at tissue-paper turkey centrepieces while trying to remember all the verses of "Over the river and through the woods . . ." Last year, though, none of us had the heart to celebrate after the election. Thanksgiving Day and the weekend after, when we usual host dinner, felt sad and empty on so many levels, a shocking replay of the disastrous Brexit referendum vote five months earlier. On a happier note, tinned pumpkin has become a lot easier to find over here, as have both fresh and frozen cranberries, sweet potatoes (though not garnet yams) and Georgia pecans, though the latter get ever more expensive. While I miss being in the States during this season, I have to admit I was a little freaked out last month on a trip back to Chicago by the way 'pumpkin spice' has taken over autumn food marketing. Still, I'm grateful for Thanksgiving as a brake in the 'run-up to Christmas,' as Brits call it here, where most everyone stresses out over pulling together one perfect Dickensian meal, amidst nonstop commercialism. Thanksgiving remains my favourite holiday -- a fun, variations-on-a-theme meal with family and friends -- no matter where I am in the world.

Everyone should buy Lyall's hilarious book "A Field Guide to the English." After every trip to London, I take it down and read it - laughing all the way. Only thing I disagree with her is that cranberry sauce does need orange zest!

For a long time, I employed many of Sarah Lyall's subterfuges and tactics when cooking for European friends. But then ten years abroad became twenty, twenty became thirty, and on. After celebrating Thanksgiving once every two years, and then maybe every five, I now happily skip it altogether. If it weren't for the sudden rash of articles in The New York Times, I might forget about it completely, though the sudden influx in late November of happy American families (Thanksgiving refugees?) in places like Paris and Rome occasionally jogs my memory. It's not that I'm not thankful: but a platter of good antipasti eaten under an olive tree makes a great alternative to dry turkey.

A great tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving in a foreign country. For an emphasis on the ties to the Usan (= American) past, I would wish all around the table to have fired in the air their big Western revolvers.

We lived in London from 1961-1971. My birthday is close to (this year on) Thanksgiving; when I was a child I found that annoying. So when in London I also enjoyed doing it my way, if at all. American products weren't readily available in our early years there, so it gave me even more latitude. Thanks for the memories!