My first attempt at my own Thanksgiving

I still look back at my table decorations for this first of my Thanksgivings and think how great it looks. I haven't yet managed to meet the majesty of this spread for sure however much I have tried.

I was first introduced to Thanksgiving by my old housemate Ursula's American friend Jazz. He was stationed here in the UK at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, the next county to our home county of Norfolk. He wanted to treat us to an all American Thanksgiving and being on the base he had access to American food products that with either can't get here or can but at super inflated prices.

We didn't know what to expect but when he turned up in his Mustang at the front door with a boot full to the brim with goods we knew we were in for a treat.

He had prepared a MASSIVE turkey the likes of which I have still not seen since, all the trimmings including sweet potatoes and marshmallows which I was dubious about but LOVED, and also a whole selection of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake slices. I remember despite the cold November weather sitting in the garden around a campfire and eating a bit of each slice and just marveling at the divine flavors.

I also got to sample Cool Whip which we had with pumpkin pie and I am sad this is something we cannot get here, and something I cannot seem to replicate either.

He also brought a case of all American Mountain Dew for us to try, not the week flavored UK version. That stuff is goooood!

I am sure he brought along many other things too for us to try but these stuck in my head the most.

It was from this point I really wanted to get on board with Thanksgiving and decided despite not being American, to find a way to celebrate it which didn't have to necessarily be linked historically to the Native Americans and the Pilgrims. I choose to do it just as a celebration to be thankful for all we have, like they do in American really.

So here is what I created. More poorly buttercream swirled cupcakes coming 'actcha!

These were maple cream cheese frosted cupcakes on an apple cinnamon muffin base. SUPER tasty but not that appealing visually. Those wonderful brown tulip muffin cases covered a lot of sins. The maple leaves are rice paper shapes I cut out from a sheet ordered off of eBay.

This was our table set up. I tried to make the flower display look a little like a turkey with the yellow lily being the beak; it kind of worked. We had bread in a shape of a turtle (thanks Morrisons), green beans (American style cooked in mushroom soup and with bacon lardons on top), corn, asparagus, mac and cheese, roast potatoes, sausages, carrots, red cabbage, stuffing, Yorkshire puddings and of course delish sweet potatoes with marshmallow. You can tell by this list there are a lot of English additions to the Thanksgiving table but at this point I was figuring out what I wanted my Thanksgiving foods to look like.

You may also note an absence of turkey. I have only recently got to grips with not cooking a turkey until its all dried up so I did a chicken for this first Thanksgiving.