Novcember

Welcome to Novcember: a cross-breed lovechild mashup where November meets December midweek. Typically at this juncture I would say something like "Wow, bye-bye [month]!" or, "Welcome to [month]!" As it happens, that's just not so cut-and-dry this week. Blog day falls just on the cusp of the -ember's; a hybrid of two months. Like a liger.

This monthful blend does, however, create a neat little structure for this post. As you may recall, if your food coma didn't obliterate your memory from last Tuesday to this, I was pretty bummed about the idea of missing Thanksgiving. To make myself a little less sad about not being home for the epic food-centered smorgasbord that holiday is, I decided to host a little Thanksgiving of my own. As you might also recall, I promised a full report for this week (that's this right here, if you haven't caught on).

Because this was to be my replacement Thanksgiving as well as a first experience with Thanksgiving for my multi-national friends, I was determined to have all the fixings. But here's the problem: I live in a dorm, with a crappy kitchen, a teeny tiny oven, and little to no cooking implements. Not to worry. Being a college student and all, I am very resourceful and, erm, creative when it comes to dealing with inconvenient situations of things like space (or lack thereof). So I begged and borrowed and wound up with a marginally better collection of pots and dishes, though decidedly not the best possible set-up. Case in point: cooking potatoes for 15 people, spread across 3 medium sized saucepans all simultaneously boiling over. I like to call this 'the misadventures of postgrads in a kitchen.'

All in all it went pretty well, thanks to some much appreciated assistance from Ad (excellent potato peeler/chopper), Raphie (esteemed pot boil-over-watcher), Diego (chief turkey maker) and from everyone who carried. When I say carried, I am referring to the fact that we had to transport all of the food and anything else we needed for dinner across a parking lot, down around a path, and over to the common room. Why? Well because we were having dinner for 15 people and our kitchens comfortably suit maybe 6. Once we got everything there and everyone arrived, we had a lovely dinner of turkey (breasts not full bird, due to the aforementioned teeny tiny oven), stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, and gravy. Props to Dan, too, for making a nice pot of mulled wine.

Now, I was going to continue the Novcember motif here by moving on to talk of Decembery things, but this post is already super long. With that in mind, I'll try to keep this brief. Lately (since the end of last week) we've been seeing some snow flurries here and there. For me, this is great. I'm not afraid of a little chilly weather. Actually, I really like it. And a few snowflakes are icing on the cake (ooh such metaphoric imagery!). However, just as I found in Delaware, people here in Wales are not so good with it. In fact, they tend to panic. A few of us tried to go out Friday night, but the night overall was a bit of a bust because very few people were out and about. Pubs were empty... in a college town... in Wales. I didn't think that could happen. My friend Cat is a perfect example of the snow-panic. Friday, there were some good flurries going, and a dusting of white was sticking to the ground. Talking online, suddenly Cat says "Oh! Be right back. I'm going down to the car to get my wellies in case it gets really bad." ......... It's November. The ground isn't even frozen. Also, it's Wales. It's not going to be a blizzard. The first mention of snow and the Brits think the world is shutting down. Cat's reasoning is that she "doesn't trust the weather" and so when the BBC weatherman says there might be snow, she goes, and I quote, "HOLY SHIT IM GOING TO DIE". And that is winter in Wales.

An early welcome to December to you all, and watch out for those killer flurries.