I'm enjoying some leftover Macoroni and Cheese Casserole and cornbread-pine nut dressing as I write this. 

We were invited to a Maryclaire and Maryam's home for Thanksgiving.  Maryclaire had purchased a turkey and was looking for some friends to help her eat it!  We obliged, bringing along some candied yams and green beans.  Tegan, Ahmed and Maryclaire's boyfriend Moustapha also joined the meal.  It was a delicious potluck and Ahmed admitted, as this was his first Thanksgiving meal, that he wasn't sure what to expect (and didn't have high hopes).  But he was pleasantly suprised (and I think he was being honest :) )  and to be honest, I was pleasantly suprised as well! Cooking American meals require a bit of creativity here in Cairo, but everyone's dishes worked out really well!  Tegan make macoroni and cheese casserole which was delicious...Maryclaire's turkey turned out very well according to the omnivores...plenty moist and flavorful.  She made stuffing and dressing and it was all delicoius!  Justin and I brought the yams and green beans in order to be sure my vegetarian tastes were well taken care of and they were! 

Funnily enough the recipe I had from my Aunt Cheryl for the yams required canned yams, which we couldn't find, so I sent Justin out Thanksgiving morning to find some yams for us to boil and chop up (I know, baking would probably retain the flavor better, but boiling was simpler/faster and they were going to be doused with sugar and nuts anyways...).  Justin needed to only go to a vegetable cart a man brings out daily, just a block away. Or so I thought.  Justin was gone a loooong time.  It turns out a different guy with fuit only was in that spot.  So Justin headed a few more blocks away for a vegetable/fruit stand street.  The street is usually lined with carts of fruits and vegetables, and even folks who only bring in one or two baskets of produce and sit with those until they're gone.  The street is littered with bad fruit and vegetables that have fallen off carts or been discarded, so the street tends to maintain a unique odor of rotting and fresh goods.  Turns out this was a bad morning to be needing yams. Just as Justin was purchasing the yams a group of police showed up...one of the guys who had bagged up Justin's yams followed the polices yelled orders to move his truck (piled high with produce), racing off before the police began tossing anything and everything they could find into a large trash truck they had with them.  The police were throwing perfectly good vegetables into the truck.  And most of the people selling this produce are probably just barely scraping by...  I guess that street of vendors is entirely informal and therefore illegal.  Which the police decided to enforce on Thanksgiving Day. I mean, only the handful on Americans in the neighborhood will notice that it's particularly Thanksgiving (many Egyptians and African or Iraqi refugees I've talked to haven't heard much about Thanksgiving before, in contrast with nearly all other American Holidays) but still!!  Anyways, Justin shoved a few pounds at another man, not sure who to pay, and got out of there. 

Despite all that our yams turned out pretty dang good. 

A few highlights from the Thanksgiving holiday:

• Walking to Maryclaire's and Maryam's with our Thanksgiving food.  They live just a ten minute walk from us, so we decided to hoof it over.  It was hysterical crossing the really busy Tahrir St. I took pictures it was so funny..which probably made us look even crazier.  Picture these white people running through the traffic holiding trays and platters of food, then one girl takes out her camera snapping pictures...
• Ahmed saved us! Just as we were racing across (think Frogger-style) I heard someone calling my name.  Ahmed, who was joining us for Thanksgiving, had just pulled up behind us and we all scrambled into his car for a ride.  Why didn't we think of that ahead of time!??!  Ahmed looked more than just a little bemused by our antics.
• We broke the handle off a perfectly good knife trying to open a bottle of wine without an opener. A delicious looking bottle of wine which we never quite figured out how to open.
• The food was amazing!
• We played a game of clue in Arabic after eating. Well, we spoke in English but everything on the board, the cards and the sheet you write on were in Arabic text. Poor Justin did his best and we translated everything before we started...but he messed up one of his rooms in his hand...representing it as another room the entire time.  Which resulted in the entire game ending wrong!  We were all convinced it was Mrs. Peacock in the Garden Room with the Wrench.  WRONG!  It was funny and we all had still fun and everyone was really good natured about Justin's game-long error. 
• We spoke with our family later last night via Skype video!  Our parents spent Thanksgiving together, so we were able to talk to my parents, Grandparents and sister, Aunts and Uncles and cousins...and Justin's Mom, Papa and sister! In the same phone call! Although we really enjoyed the festivities we were really missing our families all day so getting to video chat with them was the perfect dessert for the evening.

The holidays are making us miss our families but we're doing our best to create the holidays here!  And, we'll be celebrating Christmas in Spain with Alisha and Kyle so it'll be a Spanish Christmas for us this year!  sing along with me... "I'm, dreaming, of a Spanish, Christmas...."