An Italian Thanksgiving

Sorry for the late posting on this, but Angie and I have been busy packing up for our long journey home to the States on Saturday. 

As you can well imagine Italy does not celebrate Thanksgiving, but those of us who are U.S. ex-Pats still do.  When we cannot be home for the holidays we try to reach out to other ex-Pats to share our holidays with.  

Angie and I are very privileged to have made wonderful friends during our time here, and Angie set about organizing a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner for those who could come.  

We wound up with a pretty big group in our apartment, 11 of us in all.  Among our number we counted one Britt (Pat) and two Italians (Donatella and Andrea).  

Despite the difficulty in finding some of the regular Thanksgiving staples in Italy, we had everything; turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, roasted carrots, mash potatoes and gravy.  We also had non-traditional dishes including melanzane parmigiana (eggplant parmesan) and kale salad. 

Primi Piatti (first courses) was crostini con funghi e formaggio (sautéed mushrooms with melted cheese on small toasted breads) and traditional crostini and schiacciata.  To maintain the authentic flavor of the breads, I toasted them over an open wood fire in Andrea’s giant BBQ grill.  All the breads were served with copious amounts of olio d’oliva – the fresh, one day old, “first press” olive oil from Andrea and Donatella’s olive orchard that we had harvested that week.  Once everyone got a taste of that oil, the Primi Piatti just disappeared…. 

Somewhere along the way our guests were able to find a superb pecan pie and pumpkin pie.

As the sun set through the open kitchen window it illuminated the olive trees with a silvery glow, once again reminding me of all that Angie and I have had to be thankful for.

A special thanks to our good friend Joss who joined us for Thanksgiving 

and who took at least half of the pictures featured here.