Things got off to a good start with a delivery of canned pumpkin from Nebraska. This cut out the rather tedious step of cooking the pumpkin (which never really got soft in the toaster oven; pushing the pumpkin bits through a sieve didn't really make it very smooth either). So the next step was, of course, finding a turkey. They don't have (as I had really hoped) lots of turkeys for sale for the Thanksgiving season in the supermarkets; this could be because there is no Thanksgiving season. There was a nice little website from a company based in southern Germany that promised to deliver the turkeys fresh to your door. However, there is always the hitch that when you aren't there for the delivery of a package that doesn't fit in your postbox, they leave you a little note to please come pick it up at the post office on the next available business day, which, with the constant onslaught of unknown holidays, made the risk of my turkey sitting in a sorting room somewhere for a day or two quite real.
Fortunately, I live within walking/biking distance of the Hamburg meat market where I tried my luck next. After finally finding an entrance, I found what I was looking for: a giant refrigerated warehouse full of every kind of meat imaginable with a guy who didn't look like he got out of the warehouse much-this was the real thing. I ordered my turkey for the following week and I asked the guy if he needed any contact information. After laughing off my very silly question - this was the kind of deal brokered with handshake and schnapps apparently- he did give me a number with his extension so I could call and make sure the turkey was there, if I must. He told me to say I was the guy that ordered the turkey. It felt pretty cool, I must say, to be the guy with the turkey.
So the week before the party, after having been warned several times how much work the whole thing would be, I did everything I could to prepare. I made two pumpkin pies, baked the potatoes and sweet potatoes, baked dinner rolls. Then a couple of days before thanksgiving, I got a call from a small chamber orchestra in Hamburg, with whom I had always wanted a chance to play, called Ensemble Resonanz. They were going to play for a funeral and they needed a bass player at the last minute; it was an opportunity I felt I couldn't turn down. However, it was on the 25th in the morning and afternoon. The turkey needed to go in the oven around then, and it needed to be stuffed directly before it went in the oven. Malene would be there, but Malene is a vegetarian and asking a vegetarian to stuff a turkey would not have been, I think, very smart. So I accepted the gig on the condition that she (Marie, the girl in the office who asked me to do the gig) might have to come over, stuff the turkey and put it in the oven. Fortunately, she was coming to thanksgiving herself and stood to profit from the arrangement-otherwise I could imagine such a request might be seen as odd.
When the day came, at 8 A.M. I called and said "Hello, I'm the guy with the turkey." A few minutes later I'm on my bicycle and another few minutes later I'm paying for a 20 lb. turkey. After putting the (shrink-wrapped) bird in a plastic bag, I asked the nice cashier if he wouldn't just help me put it in my backpack. If he thought this was strange he didn't seem to show it. The ride home was quite wobbly; it really incredible how a 20 lb. bird on your back changes your center of gravity.
The rest was, as they say, history. Or better put, it was so much work that I can't even remember most of what happened, much less any remotely interesting details or anecdotes. The stuffing problem was solved by not stuffing the turkey (who would have thought it could be so simple?) and many more problems were solved in the seven or eight calls home that afternoon. The result was, as they say in the local jargon, very funny party.
My potential turkey-stuffer Marie and my friend after a long night of cooking, Beck's
the guests...
and carving the roast beast...
German word of the day
Truhthahn- [TROOT h aah n]; male turkey
Pute- [POOH tuh] female turkey
