Thanksgiving in Oman

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving in Oman.  For those of you not familiar with American Thanksgiving, it was first celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621.  They were celebrating the first harvest in the New World.  It is a day to spend with family and friends, give thanks for what we have, eat lots of traditional foods, and these days, watch football on tv.

 

This is the day before Thanksgiving.  I spent most of the day baking.  These are the crescent rolls I make every year.  They are such a Holmes family tradition that now my daughter and son in the US make them for their Thanksgiving.

I always double the recipe and make 48.  It is really never enough, but like I told Austin, I only have one oven!

This is the adult table.  We invited two families to spend the day with us.  Several of these friends had never experienced an American Thanksgiving, so Austin wrote a little paper to explain it to them. 

The kid table.  It is very traditional to decorate with pumpkins.  I brought several with me from the US.  I did find real pumpkins at Al Fair in Muscat, but I was not going to pay $25 for one pumpkin!

The dessert table.  I made a carrot cake and two chocolate pecan pies.  We also had the traditional pumpkin pie.

We set up the food buffet in the kitchen.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli and peas, dressing, fruit, and the crescent rolls.  We bought the turkey already cooked, since I have a very small oven.  I can't believe I didn't get more pictures of the actual food, but I was very busy making sure everything was ready.  I was able to get just about everything to make our meal.  A friend brought us some mini marshmallows from the US for the sweet potatoes.  The only thing we lacked was cranberries.

We all took a walk on the beach before dessert.  I am holding a pumpkin.  Don't know why I felt we needed a prop, but I just did.  :)  It is very difficult to tell the time of year on a beach.

Our whole group

Well, there was not any American football on TV.  Joe had to make do with rugby.

Oh, I mentioned in my blog post about National Day that today is a national holiday in Oman.  That is how our British friends were able to attend.  So, thanks, Sultan Qaboos!  And Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!