Gringo Holidays in Honduras

American Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us. Our family has tried to maintain some of our North American traditions, including the Thanksgiving feast, while living here in Honduras. Some years this has been quite a challenge.

Two years ago, when we celebrated our first Thanksgiving in Gracias, it had been just over a month since we had moved here from Guanaja. We had tried to use up most of our stored food before moving, and I hadn't had time to find the special foods which mean Thanksgiving to our family in this new area of the country. That year, in addition to having chicken instead of turkey (we've only had turkey in Honduras one year, when my parents managed to send one down with a shipment on a cargo boat), we made from scratch our stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, pies, pumpkin bread, and applesauce. I did find canned cranberry sauce that year.

Other years, including this year, I have hoarded some foods, and even been able to purchase some others, in order to have them available on Thanksgiving.

This year, the most exciting thing of all: we have a TURKEY! Oh, and it's a BUTTERBALL! Can you get more traditional than that, for a suburban girl like me? This turkey was purchased at a store in nearby Santa Rosa de Copan, which specializes in foods and household products which are difficult to find in the local food stores. No, it wasn't cheap, but it will be a very special treat for our family and our guests.

Here is a tasteful array of all of the foods we have hoarded this year, for possible inclusion in our Thanksgiving Dinner. Some of these foods were purchased in the store where we bought the turkey, others came from shopping trips to the big city of San Pedro Sula (about a 3-4 hour drive from here), and others were sent in shipments from grandparents earlier in the year, and hoarded until this special occasion.

Rachel (who, at 16, is without a doubt the main cook of our family) has already mentioned that she may choose to make some of these items from scratch, rather than use the prepared versions. Certainly the mashed potatoes will be the hard work kind (we have a recipe which uses crema, a Honduran dairy product which is like sour cream, in the potatoes, and it is yummy).

We have several packets of turkey gravy mix, which we will likely use to stretch the pan gravy I always make from the drippings. I actually think I've gotten pretty good at this.

We're thrilled to have canned pumpkin, to make our family's beloved pumpkin bread, and we even have real cream cheese (I forgot to put that in the picture) to use on it. We also have enough pumpkin to make a pie or two.

Rachel cooks fruit pies regularly, so it's nothing for her to add an apple and a cherry pie to the list of goodies!

We'll have guests for Thanksgiving, but only gringos this year. We've had Honduran guests for Thanksgiving before, but, because it isn't their tradition and many of the foods are strange to them, they don't appreciate the special foods and the extra effort as much as gringo guests do! This year, we have some young people who teach at a bilingual school in Gracias coming for the meal, as well as a Peace Corps volunteer who lives nearby, in the city of La Campa.

You may have noticed, on the wall behind the food in the photo, there are a few paper snowflakes. This is a Christmas decorating tradition for our family. Making paper snowflakes is a wonderful craft for us, as the supplies are always on hand (scissors and copier paper), and even my youngest children can produce a nice snowflake, with a little assistance. Some years we have covered all of the living room walls in snowflakes. Our current house has one large room which serves as living room, family room, dining room, library, and office. We'll see if we are up to the challenge of getting this whole room covered with snowflakes. Fortunately, a lot of wall space is already covered with our many bookshelves!