Cart before the horse

As a history teacher you would expect that I would do well with dates. For instance, knowing that the Greeks came before the Romans; that World War I came before World War II; or that Thanksgiving come before Christmas. Ok, I can honestly say that I know all of these things, however, it does not excuse the fact that I have posted about Christmas before posting about Thanksgiving (sort of).
Thanksgiving actually came in two parts last year - the campus celebration, and the trip to Istanbul. As I'm sure you know, the Istanbul trip has been posted, but the campus celebration is truly blog worthy as well!

Questions: How many international teachers does it take to prepare a Thanksgiving feast for 150+ Bulgarians? And how many turkeys should be prepared?

Answer: About 20, if you include the bartenders and DJ. And at least 25!

That's right, in the American College of Sofia's effort to bring a little bit of American culture to Bulgaria, a former president thought it would be a great idea to introduce Thanksgiving to the Bulgarian staff by having the international staff cook for them and their families. The only problem this year? No one on staff had actually prepared a full Thanksgiving meal before - including the turkeys. But we're a creative, resourceful, and adventurous group that is not going to let a little thing like ignorance stop us from having a successful party!

On the ambitious menu:
-25 turkeys
-braised carrots
-homemade potato biscuits
-mashed potatoes
-garlic-rosemary roasted potatoes, made by yours truly (thank you Gretchen for the recipe)
-homemade apple pie
-homemade pumpkin pie, made from real pumpkins we split ourselves!
-two types of stuffing
-sweet potatoes
-gravy
-wine
-beer
-rakia (Nikolai's homemade goodness!)
-a few other things that I can't remember at the moment, but hopefully will be added in the comment section below

Let me start by saying "hats off" to Will Heron, our resident Econ/Math teacher who took on the challenge of prepping and making 25 turkeys that came out DELICIOUS!!! Well done, Will! In fact, for having little-to-no experience with most of these dishes, everything came out really good. The hit of the meal, however, was those tasty garlic-rosemary potatoes. No, seriously, they got a lot of compliments. I know this sounds rather conceited, but they were very popular. Perhaps someone who was there can post a comment about them so I don't seem too egotistical.

Regardless, the meal was an enormous undertaking involving two days worth of prep by the staff, strong coordination (thank you, Derek), a lot of beer drinking, and a hefty bill covered by the College. And on top of all this good food, we had handmade decorations (nicely done Jaime and crew), dancing, and open bar, a great DJ (DJ B-Ranch) who also created a trivia game, and 150+ Bulgarian who thanked us for days after the party.

Here are just few pictures of the event so you can get an idea of the undertaking. As always click on any of the captions to bring you to the Picasa page to see more.

Abby making sweet-taters

Amanda heating things up!

Enough turkey to feed a Bulgarian army

You want turkey? We got turkey.

Nobody panic!  We're professionals.

Jamie making fresh dough with the ACS rolling pin

More butter than you can shake a carrot at

Potato biscuits for everybody!

DJ B mixin' it up on the 1s and the 2s

Culture successfully shared!

Nazdrave.