Wednesday, December 2, 2009

An Italian Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving, ISA hosted a dinner for us here in Rome. We were all very excited about this, since we were all craving our traditional Thanksgiving foods from home!

ISA asked for volunteers to bake pumpkin pies - pumpkin is something that in Italy, is not normally eaten in sweet dishes...usually only savory. So our program leaders had to go to specialty stores to find all of the ingredients for the pies, then the students who wanted to would bake them. My roommates and I volunteered to do this, and a couple days before dinner I stopped by the office to pick up the ingredients. They labeled everything in Italian and provided the English translation as well :)



My two roommates and I got to work -- Jen made the crust and Landon and I made the filling. Landon was proud of it!




When the pie was cooled, I put some finishing touches on it ;)


The dinner was held in a big common room in an apartment not far from mine. When we got there, we were ready to eat!


The caterers set up a mountain of plates on the buffet table


Food!


Caterers carving the turkey


My plate -- stuffed vegetables (red pepper, zucchini and eggplant), mashed potatoes, bread and sausage polenta. I don't like turkey...I know, how un-American of me!


Dinner in full swing


Pie makers!


With our adorable caterers! They ate the pumpkin pie we made and loved it :)


My friends and I with the ISA staff (Mattea, Vera, Laura, Andrea and Jessica)! They are seriously awesome and I love them! (Back row: me, Mattea, Vera, Laura, Andrea, Kristin and Jessica. Bottom: Courtney, Sarah, Ana and Landon.)


My friends and I had a great time at dinner! It was nice to have some Thanksgiving food, and I was impressed with ISA's ability to find turkey here -- it's not that common in Italy. Still though, nothing compares to Thanksgiving food from home, but this was the next best thing :)

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