There's nothing like an American Holiday to make you miss home. In Italy, they clearly do not celebrate Thanksgiving, so us Americans were on our own for Turkey Day festivities. We still had to go to class which was a bummer, because if there was a time I did anything but eat mass amounts of food and visit with family on Thanksgiving, I can't remember.
There is a restaurant here in Perugia that nicely enough put together a traditional Thanksgiving dinner special, as most people in the city realized that there is a large population of Americans in town that would enjoy the whole turkey (tacchino), mashed potatoes (pure di patate), stuffing (riempimento) deal. However, this was not going to cut it for me and my friends. No we had to do this restaurant one better and make our own Thanksgiving day feast. And who was in charge of the tacchino and the riempimento? Of course, ME! And let me tell you this was an interesting project for me. Not only have I never cooked a turkey before, I've never even cooked anything larger than a few chicken breasts. So a WHOLE turkey, this was going to be interesting. First of all, they don't just have entire turkeys on hand here in Perugia so I had to go to the butcher (they also don't have supermarkets with everything in them, you have to go separate places for bread, meats, fruits and veggies etc.) and order a whole turkey a week before. But that was the easy part! I finally get it home and luckily I had my roommate visiting me from the US because I'm unsure I could've done the rest alone. Because the turkey came mostly clean, but unlike the turkeys you get at home, it still had the neck and tail attached, and several of the innards still
inside. So we had to clean out the rest of the turkey (gross!) and attempt to remove the tail and neck. We ended up leaving these attached because we had no idea how to take them off! But we washed him (Tommy, we named the turkey, it made the thought of handling the raw turkey less unnerving for it to have a name :) ) and managed to cover him and stuff him and put him in the pan. I made stuffing from scratch too, something I've never done before, and it may have been even tastier than the turkey!! My next issue though, was in Italy they use Celsius degrees, and my instructions (from the mum) were in Fahrenheit, and there is no dial on my oven to set it to a specific temperature either. So letting it cook was interesting! And Italians must also have an extra sense to simply know when a meat is finished cooking, because they don't have meat thermometers. Every time I asked a kitchen supply store if they had one, they looked at me like I was crazy. Not so great a feeling, especially when you're already a little sad not to be home with your family for Thanksgiving! But once my friends started showing up for the feast, things got much more enjoyable. Everyone was excited to be celebrating together, even if we couldn't be with our family at home, we could at least be with our 'family' here. And everyone brought a 
different dish and we ate picnic style on the floor. And Tommy the turkey, when he was ready was pretty darn good! I also had my first attempts at carving a turkey, which was also really fun. Sitting around with my girlfriends talking and eating and laughing was a perfect way to spend Thanksgiving! And the turkey coma that always follows Thanksgiving dinner and eating far too much was a welcome excuse to enjoy relaxing for a night, and not being a busy busy bee like I am for most of my time here!If you asked me at this time last year what I'd be doing for my next Turkey day , I never would've thought that I would be spending it in Italy, cooking a whole turkey (basically by myself) and having a blast doing both, but that was exactly what I did! And you know what, I wouldn't have had it any other way!
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