What I Did on Thanksgiving in the Absence of Any Pies

Thanksgiving in the Netherlands is something of a non-event.  They don't sell turkey (or at least I couldn't find any in the grocery store), they don't really do pies, and, obviously, their Indians didn't teach them how ti grow corn.  (That joke would be funnier if there were more non-Amer Indians living here but since presumably you are not au currant on the immigration statistics of the Netherlands, we'll just pretend it works.)  I had to go pick up some bread and some butter and I kept thinking that I had to go before Thursday before I would remember that nothing would be closed on Thursday, after all.

I did have a special Thanksgiving treat, though.  I had stampot (mashed carrots, potatoes, and sauerkraut) --I figured that if I couldn't have traditional American food, I'd go traditional Dutch.  I also splurged and bought canned peas.  They are super expensive here--a regular sized can costs about $1.50.  I thought about making pea salad but didn't because 1) Dutch mayonnaise is weird and quite sweet and 2) they don't really have cheddar cheese here or, rather, they have "cheddar" but it is super, super expensive and it isn't the pretty extra-orange color you need to make a real pea salad.

But, to make the day special (after I pretended to do a lot of home work), I wore my Christmas socks with Santas on them, listened to Christmas music, and did this:

(Please ignore the little typo, there.)

For the last week or so I have been making origami Christmas decorations (usually when I should have been doing school work, but that is beside the point).  So I put up all the rest of it together in an homage to the Christmas trees we had when I was little.   Plus, to top it all off, it only cost about $6 in crepe paper and origami paper.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!