A Dominican Thanksgiving

To be completely honest, I was dreading Thanksgiving. I had a stubborn moment where I decided I was just going to ignore it and take the vacation days as days to sleep in and relax, and forget all about the holiday because we couldn't be home celebrating with our families.

But I adjusted my outlook and realized that it was important to celebrate our holiday here, even if were were thousands of miles away from where we wanted to be.

So, we had Thanksgiving. My first solo Thanksgiving, and the first time I ever cooked anything for Thanksgiving. I went all out.

Ross doesn't observe Thanksgiving here in Dominica, so Matt still had class in the morning. To get in the Thanksgiving spirit, we started the day with Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks Via.

It turns out, the hardest part of Thanksgiving in Dominican is finding enough room in our small fridge to store everything, and enough pots and pans to cook everything in. We ended up going with a turkey loaf type dish because I wasn't sure a full size turkey could fit in our oven. Plus it was around $40 USD. No thanks.

But don't worry. We still didn't go hungry.

We had turkey, real mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, crescent rolls and cranberry sauce. Then for dessert, we had carrot cake, pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon maple cream cheese frosting and peanut butter pie. Whew.

I cooked for three days to get ready for this feast.

But it was delicious. It turned out better than I could have hoped for.

We had our friend Bryan over to join us as his fiance' Tabby is back at home getting ready for their upcoming nuptials. We can't wait to celebrate with them and see the rest of our island family in just a few weeks!

So even though this Thanksgiving wasn't with our family, we still had a wonderful holiday with so much to be thankful for.