As most of you probably know, Thanksgiving has always been our favorite holiday of the year.  Since graduate school, there has always been a place at the table for not only family, but friends who had no family around to celebrate with. For us, the special meaning of this holiday is that there needs to be only gratitude for the blessings of family and friends.  Patriotism and religion need play no part.  It is just a day dedicated to reflecting on the joy and blessings we have in our lives.

For the last thirty years, we have celebrated Thanksgiving at our house.  There has been a revolving cast of characters over those years and the size of the crowd has varied from 22-32 depending on the what else was going on in peoples lives.  Until a year ago, some of my grandchildren had never had Thanksgiving anywhere else.  For me personally it played a factor in the decision to move to Italy.  It was a hard decision to break the circle of having this celebration at our house in Seattle.

Some traditions just don’t die easily.  Although we missed some family and friends terribly, we did put together a celebration with 18 people in attendance.  Our daughter, Jamie, and our son, Zach, with his girlfriend, Shannon, made the trip to Italy for the occasion.  We then had 13 of our new friends from Lecce at the table.  There was one American, one New Zealander/Aussie (who has an Irish passport and has been here for years), and then 11 Italians, most of whom were experiencing their very first Thanksgiving.  We had a ball.

The day before with our preparatory lunch on the roof top deck.

Italians are understandably proud of the sweets they make here and several brought some to the feast, but you can’t have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie.   Believe me, no stores here have the canned pumpkin filling and the actual thing is not all that easy to find and since they do not make anything here that requires what we call a pie pan, even trying to find something that might work was an adventure.  With the help of several locals we did find local pumpkins and Jamie and I set out on the somewhat daunting task of making the pie for the first time in our lives.  I can proudly say they turned out very well (Kim, Kira and Becky, Marilyn would have been proud).  The guests loved them.

We had to special order the turkey.  We had been worried that we would not be able to get one big enough when in fact the smallest we could get was 34 pounds! That created several logistical problems in our small not-so-well-equipped kitchen.

The proud butchers.

The brining in the sink.  It was the only thing I could find that was big enough.

It more than filled the borrowed pan.

And completely filled the oven.

The finished product. (photo cred to Jamie, I was a little busy)

Trying to carve this thing might have been the biggest challenge of the day.  But we got it to happen.

All in all, the dinner was very successful and since you need to start dinner here much later, 8 pm at least, we partied until the wee hours of the morning.  I think we finally got to bed around 3 in the morning.

Transforming our living room into a dinning hall for 18 was no easy feat.  We even had to find a second hand store to buy 5 folding chairs.  But in the end it all worked out.

What a lovely group this is.

And Maurizio even brought his guitar to entertain after dinner.

The morning after.

Next up will be several posts of the trips we have taken to some of the many fascinating places we have visited in Puglia and the Salento peninsula.  Many of these trips have been with the same cast of characters.  We have been remarkably fortunate to find such warm, giving and adventurous friends here.