We ended up not having Thanksgiving on the day of Thanksgiving. Being that we are not in the US, we didn’t have the day off. We decided to have dinner on Saturday.

B had gotten the turkey in Sha Tin a couple days before. He got a turkey we could put straight into the oven without any preparation.

I was able to find cranberries when Monster and I went to the grocery store the morning of Saturday. You don’t usually see cranberries in Hong Kong.

B brought over his oven to be able to cook since the turkey was going to take the oven for the whole day.

It was fun to cook Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice to cook with B. He helped me make the stuffing. Then he made his favorite, green bean casserole.

In the end, we had a ton of food. We made turkey (of course), stuffing with spicy sausage, cranberry sauce with blackberries, blueberries, cherries, and raspberries. Mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. For dessert, I made pumpkin squares and lemon pie with homemade lemon curd.

Thanksgiving is normally my favorite holiday. I love having dinner with my family. It would be my little group of weirdos with all of my siblings, their various people, and my parents. Before we moved away, it would be my aunt and her family. Sometimes it would even be B’s family there as well.

It was such a great time just to be together with our family. We had a tradition that we started when we moved to Apple River based on this old goofy TV show. There is a robotic turkey that talks about having a taco pie which was the tradition at the time. So that’s what my brothers started to make for Thanksgiving. Taco pie.

I miss taco pie. I miss my brothers. They are all so goofy. Their senses of humor is like nothing I’ve seen in anyone else. I remember being in Galena holding Bub as a baby, waiting for my family to finish something. I could hear my brothers yelling down the street at the top of their lungs, “flush!” which was something that came from when my parents moved into their new house. My brothers were moving furniture up the starts, and the one at the bottom would yell to the one at the top that the furniture was flush with the walls or stairs.

I miss my parents. My mom and dad are amazing cooks. My dad won’t take any credit, but he does an amazing job with the things that he makes. My mom makes the most amazing stuffing (though my stuffing this year was pretty good).

It is hard knowing that we will not be going home for Christmas. This is the first year since our first year here that we will not be going home. It will be a long time before we are able to get home again. There is a required 2 week quarantine in a hotel when you return to Hong Kong and an extra week where you have to stay home.

If we went home for Christmas, we wouldn’t even be able to stay long enough for Christmas. It would also be an added cost of having to pay for a hotel room and delivery food for 2 weeks when we return.

I really want to go home and see my family. I know everyone feels like that right now. It’s difficult being stuck in a place that is so small. Granted, there are plenty of places we could still explore in Hong Kong, we cannot go outside the border of Hong Kong. At least in the US, you can travel throughout the country. While you probably shouldn’t, you are not trapped.

I am grateful that we were able to make a Thanksgiving dinner as a family. I wish we could have spent Thanksgiving with our family in the US.