Thoughts on Thanksgiving in Italy

I have finally learned to make pie crust.
Don’t underestimate the importance of that statement. Homemade crust is an art form. While my mom is a fantastic cook and has taught me lots of tricks of the trade, pie crust was one of those things we never had time to do. Spurred by my prolonged absence from the kitchen, I recklessly volunteered to “help with the pies” and found myself in charge of the part that I know the least about.
After referencing multiple internet sources, a few friends, and my mother, I dived in to flour, butter, ice water, salt, and sugar. While I meant that figuratively, I was covered enough of all of the above ingredients that the metaphor is a bit too appropriate. Cutting in butter is always a challenge to be creative with method and utensils…I used a fork, butter knives, cheese grater, and my fingers at different points in the process, much to the amusement of our program director. Since all the recipes called for good old cups and tablespoons and teaspoons, I used a teacup and just guessed at most of the measurements. Since I had to make six, some turned out better than others. By the time I got to the last one, I had my technique down pat. Then I got to line the pans, crimp the edges, and then turn my crusts over to Amanda and Dr. Webb in the filling department and then on to Vi for decoration.

The dinner itself was a tremendous success. Our guests came like the Magi, bearing gifts of wine, chocolate, and flowers. Since sweet potatoes were absolutely nowhere to be found, we compensated with a delicious pumpkin soup; the lack of cornbread stuffing was made up with polenta, which is the closest thing I’ve had to grits in what seems like years. The colossal turkeys were astounding, the cornbread a hit, the pumpkin pie with mascarpone at least a curiosity, if not exactly a universal favorite. I was determined to like it—spending an afternoon with flour up to my elbows has got to have some reward—and I succeeded quite easily. Torta di zucca (dolce, mind you) was just a little odd for the Italians, but most of the Americans were more than happy.
As Meredith is one of those colleges where you do something once and it’s a tradition (“First Annual” is a term we should feel no compunction in using), we felt justified in creating something that I hope will be a lasting ritual for Meredith in Sansepolcro students and friends. As a reminder of what the holiday is really all about, we wanted to both remember what we were thankful for and thank all those who helped get our program off to such a wonderful start.

I’m sure that at some point during their elementary school experience, my American readers have made a hand turkey (tacchino di mano is the newly-coined Italian phrase). I couldn’t help but laugh when I introduced my high school students in the English class that I work with to the technique. They were perfectly mystified as I traced my hand on the board, but broke out into giggles as I added a beak, an eye, and two turkey legs. On Thanksgiving, we asked all fifty-something of our guests to make their own hand turkey, cut it out and decorate it, write something that they were thankful for on the palm, and hang it on a little tree in the center of the room. Some perfectly serious adults have surprising artistic talents that appear when they are handed a sheet of blank paper and a handful of crayons. When we went through the pile of thankful hand turkeys, we found several that were works of art and several with really sweet and thoughtful things written on them. And then again, a few were not quite as touching. Not one, not two, but three of them got right to the point: “Thanks for American girls.”