Turkey Day in Mexico City: Sunny & 75°F

We had quite the fancy spread by the pool!

To add to my list of “firsts” here in Mexico, I can now add “having Thanksgiving Dinner outdoors by a pool in 75-degree weather”.  This may not be novel to those of you in warmer climes, but for those of us whose past Thanksgiving celebrations have been limited almost exclusively to states north of the Mason-Dixon line, it is a landmark event.

The new casserole warmer: the outdoor grill

Several of our fellow apartment building-dwellers collaborated to arrange a feast fit for a king, complete with fancy china & fairy lights. An impressive THREE turkeys sacrificed their lives for our gathering, ensuring that all attendees went home at the end of the evening with individual packets of turkey leftovers ready to be made into tasty sandwiches this weekend. Also thanks to the high ratio of midwesterners (and those with good midwestern food sensibilities), we had no shortage of suuuuper-tasty casseroles & other carb/dairy laden goodness.

Let the record reflect, this was not my plate...though mine may have looked similar...

As per tradition, we piled our plates as high as we could & then all ate until we could barely breathe.  Ahhh American holidays, God bless.  Fan favorites were magical handmade dinner rolls, incredibly light & fluffy sweet potato souffle, and three kinds of stuffing (2 sausage, 1 cornbread). We came bearing our personal favs– pizza dip, swiss cheese/green bean casserole, pecan pie, and the illustrious annual cranberry daiquiris. Apparently cranberries don’t exist here, so we were forced to reconstitute dried cranberries, but they performed admirably well.

Us savoring our daiquiris while I wear my "handmade" Turkey Necklace

Thanks to all participants who made our first Mexican Thanksgiving an experience that neither we nor our waistlines will soon forget!!

We dined by Christmas lights as dusk fell

...and a view of the festivities from above...