A Very Campo Thanksgiving

While on the 8-hour trip home from Guarita yesterday, I was thinking about how to best write about my Thanksgiving weekend. I suppose I have no choice but to start chronologically: As soon as I got off the bus in Taryn’s site, I hopped in a moto taxi with some friends to go slaughter some turkeys. It was not my idea.

Kyla, Taryn, me

They picked out three birds, according to Kyla based on the ones with the prettiest feathers (that turned out to be a bad way to pick turkeys.) There were five of us volunteers there for the slaughter. I think I can speak for all of us when I say it was a little traumatizing but at least now we have the understanding of, quite literally, where our turkey come from and the dedication it requires to make the meal happen. Taryn said she could even hear one of the turkeys gobbling from her house for the past few months because it was being raised at the house of a neighbor.

The fogon

And hey, we did it just like the pilgrims did! How authentic is that?? We even cooked the turkeys in an old-fashioned fogon oven without using a watt of electricity. I think the birds got a little overcooked but still tasted good.

However there was a bit of conflict between the gringo girls and the Honduran women that were helping us prepare the turkeys. The Hondurans wanted to season and “marinade” the birds in what they usually use which is everything in their fridge. They simply could not understand why we didn’t want soy sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, hot sauce and sofrito salsa our turkeys.

Stuffing

And then when we went to stuff the turkey cavities with good old-fashioned cornbread stuffing, well the Honduran women just thought we were nuts. I guess that’s not a tradition here. I had the feeling they didn’t trust us or thought we didn’t know what we were doing. But we finally came to an agreement and we let them do one turkey their way with every imaginable condiment and then we did the other two our way with thyme, rosemary, and stuffing. As it turned out, the smoke-filled fogon oven cooked the hell out of them all so we had no idea which was which anyway. They all tasted smoky and a little crispy, but delicious nonetheless.

Our full menu included all the traditional American treats: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, rolls, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, corn casserole (one of my offerings), salad and choco-pecan pie (my other offering), pumpkin pie and chocolate mousse. To finish out the evening we had a bonfire and obligatory S’mores. In total we fed 15 gringos, five Hondurans, and then made several plates to give away to other people in town who helped us out. And there were lots of people that helped us. This is because Taryn’s house wasn’t exactly equipped for cooking a huge meal (she had a two-top burner and a toaster oven) so we were running around town cooking and storing food in about three different kitchens. According to Taryn it was the most gringos that have been in her site, perhaps ever. So we made quite a spectacle of ourselves. But it’s how we do.

I’m pretty sure I woke up the next morning with a bit of a hangover and my abs were sore from laughing so hard. I take it as a sign that I had a pretty good time. Food was delicious, company was great, everything turned out well.

Here are some of the best shots from the turkey slaughter and Thanksgiving Day. I don’t have room for all the pictures here but you can see them all on my flickr page. **Warning: some of these pictures are a little graphic – if you have an aversion to blood and organs I advise you look away**

Click on the first picture to view them in carousel gallery:

: Kyle and Marcos – the son of the family who raised one of the turkeys

: Taryn’s friends who helped us out claimed that force-feeding cheap liquor to the birds makes them taste better. Although when drunk they do flail around less.