Pseudo-Thanksgiving

I return from being sick/having to study, so lo, there will be a post! Also, something has actually happened which merits a post as life of yet has been rather routine. Go to school, go home, go to friend's place for coffee, make some damn tasty food (ATTENTION FUTURE ROOMIE(S)!! I have discovered I like to cook to be prepared for eating delicious concoctions and other such things).
Anywho,
Since it is genetically impossible to spend a year without ingesting pie in a way that is associated with Thanksgiving, me and a few other people hatched a plan to have a Thanksgiving dinner. However, due to late classes and other factors, it couldn't actually be on Thanksgiving, which works for me because then I could chat with my family in all their house-filling-ruckus-causing-iron dragon-playing entirety.
So on Friday, after swinging by the store for some last minute ingredients, I journeyed over to Rebecca's apartment to begin the cooking. Now, the thing about Austrian housing (at at least what I've decided based on my kitchen and Rebeccas's) is that a normal oven is very rare. Instead, there are tiny convection ovens, which are ok for some things, but annoying when it comes to baking anything large (so a turkey was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out). But, there was still pie, though we had to cook them one at a time. Rebecca decided to make pumpkin pie while I opted for chocolate. Since the pumpkin was still defrosting the preparation for chocolate tastiness began and it all went quite smoothly. One minor problem was that corn syrup (a needed ingredient) doesn't exist in any store that I explored so instead I made just a simple sugar syrup which worked wonderfully. The problem came when I was testing to see if the sugar had dissolved in the water or not. Let it be known, eating hot sugar syrup is extremely painful as it sticks to the roof of the mouth like an octopus of fire (not that it has 8 legs, just that it clings). About half of the roof of my mouth was all smooth and tender after that. Also, if anyone is concerned, if making a pie crust is an impossibility, just use dough for sugar cookies, it works really well.
As the chocolate pie was baking and potatoes were boiling I began work on the gravy, mushroom gravy to be precise. I was sooooooooooooooooooo happy that it worked and I felt ultra fancy because I even added some wine.
Once the pie was out of the oven we took a quick side trip to a store and picked up some sweet potatoes and cranberry jelly (since it was the only thing we could find). And then returned to the apartment where Rebecca continued to diligently peel potatoes.
The pumpkin pie turned out equally good, although the filling was a bit, spongy I guess, because we added too much flour. But I'd say since we used actual pumpkin (not from a can) we are afforded our screw-ups.
More cooking went down, looking up recipes, listening to music and a whoooole lot of kitchen tool improvisation before we were finally ready at around 6:30. Now, granted we went to the store, and we only had one tiny oven and two stove tops to cook with, but still, we started cooking at like 12:00. I had NO IDEA it takes so long, and this is after spending my whole life watching other people spend all day cooking for Thanksgiving. Mom, Dad, Aaron, I now appreciate your efforts. Although, despite having spent our whole day cooking, Rebecca and I both agreed that it was worth skipping class for. :-P
One other small cooking snafu arose when it was time for the stuffing to go into the oven. The instructions called for tin foil, but there was none to be found so Yuri (from Russia) suggested using waxed paper that had been buttered (with the butter side down). This was working pretty well, until I lifted up the paper a bit to check on the stuffing and.....WOOOOSHHH!!!!! The paper caught on fire (yeah, the oven is THAT small). I stared at the fire and did a little panicky dance and Rebecca merely glanced over and said "make sure it doesn't burn the carpet," leaving fire putting out duties to Yuri, who took them like a champ. The stuffing even survived with only a light singeing of the top most layer.
The actual dinner itself was fantastic. It was a potluck so not only was there Thanksgiving food, but Spanish Omelet, fruit salad, some kind of spicy pasta salad, twice-baked potatoes, pita and hummus, and some chocolates (homemade by Jess, awesome I know). I can proudly say that all the non-Thanksgiving-celebrating people (i.e not America or Canadian) left the apartment with a solid urge to simply nap and not eat for a day or so, and really, isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about?
Oh, and mashed potatoes without butter and mixed with one of those electric slicer things? Yeah, that turns into potato glue.
Pictures will be up eventually, I gotta steal them from some one's camera.
P.S Sarah I'll send you a postcard if you send me your address!