Give Thanks

We had an awesome Thanksgiving. Not quite as traditional as usual, but it was a lot of fun. The teachers of TAIS prepared a Thanksgiving feast for the students. We recruited some of our high school students to help out. The total in attendance was around seventy hungry people. This was a big task! Heather and I started out by baking three apple pies and three coconut cream pies. Esther, one of my 8th grade students, and I sat down and peeled about thirty small apples for the pies. We had no peelers, and so resorted to small knives. It was slow going! Eventually, we got the pile down to about three remaining apples, when Heather exclaimed, "Look what I found!" and held up a peeler. Ahhh!!!!!

The pies were soon put together and baked to golden delicious perfection. Awesome!

Since we had no egg beating device (electric or manual) and no cream of tartar we had decided to make the coconut cream pies sans meringue. After the preparation was completed and the pies were baking, I got to thinking that if they were able to make meringue in the days before egg beaters (and cream of tartar?) than so could I. I grabbed a whisk and some egg whites and went to town. About twenty minutes later I had a large blister forming on my hand and my arm was about to fall off, but soft peaks were beginning to form! Our Chinese teacher Joy took over. She beat for another fifteen to twenty minutes and we had meringue! I quickly added it to a pie and baked it to a succulent golden brown. Mmmmmm! Upon later tasting, it was delicious!

The morning of Thanksgiving, Heather and I ran to the nearby town of Puli to get a few overlooked supplies. I felt very popular as my phone was ringing every two minutes. (Probably because Heather's battery had died) We found the necessary items and headed out of the store. As we approached the car, we heard a drumming sound. We looked down the street and noticed a very long, very slow moving parade about fifty meters away. They were headed right for us! "We gotta get outta here before we get blocked in for a half hour!" I screamed. As we threw the groceries in the trunk, Heather grabbed an improperly closed loaf of bread. The twistee gave out and slices went flying everywhere. I ran the cart back while she collected bread from the sidewalk. (Five second rule!?!?) I backed out of our spot at breakneck speed and screeched out of the lot only a few meters in front of the police car that was heading up the parade. Phew!!!! We made it! That was close. Then I got pulled over. Just kidding
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We headed to Moriah, Suzanne and Joy's house to deliver the goods and start cooking. We were assigned the task of preparing green bean casserole. Rumors were flying around everywhere that the green beans had somehow gone AWOL. We headed to the pantry (AKA the elementary school) to investigate. The rumors turned out to in fact be true. For the past several days we had been looking up substitutions online (ie: The nearest bottle of corn syrup is 4000 miles away, can I use something else to create a similar taste/effect?) What could we substitute for the missing green beans? Seaweed? Tofu? Hmmm... To say the least this would be slightly less than traditional. I breathed a sigh of relief as Heather emerged triumphant from Jeremy's office holding six cans of green beans. They were just hidden, not actually missing.

Back to kitchen stadium (Moriah, Suzanne and Joy's kitchen). We began cooking. There are no french onions in Taiwan (at least that we could find) so we substituted Italian bread crumbs. Not ideal. It turned out ok, but not what I would call delicious.

We then turned to Moriah, who was beginning to look frantic. The night before, she and a few students had peeled forty, yes forty, pounds of potatoes. She had put them in a giant pot, placed it in the center of the stove top and turned on all four burners. After about an hour and a half, it still had not started boiling. Dinner was fast approaching. She was beginning to sweat. We paused for a moment to ask for Divine assistance in the boiling of the potatoes. The Lord came through, and the pot was soon boiling. I was then assigned the task of mashing. Draining this giant pot seemed out of the question, so we scooped the potatoes out into smaller pots. This seemed to be working, but was taking forever. Eventually, I decided to go for it, and drained the pot. I succeeded in not dumping the contents into the sink, which I was rather pleased with myself about. Five sticks of butter, and large quantities of salt and milk later, we had forty pounds of mashed potatoes! Delicious!




The meal was awesome. It was quite a spread as you can see. We realized that all our hard work was worth it the moment we chomped into these delicious dishes. It turns out that we have some serious collective culinary skills. Despite the few missing ingredients, it tasted very authentic.





I ate a huge plateful. I was full. I ate another plateful. I was about to explode. I ate three pieces of pie. My personal philosophy is that "there's always room for pie!"







Aside from the delicious meal, we have much to be thankful for. God has blessed us more than we even realize. He has given us awesome family and friends. Our experience in Taiwan is certainly one we will remember for the rest of our lives. He never fails to provide for all of our needs (and a lot of our wants too).