Happy Thanksgiving all! Hope you enjoy a nice meal with your loved ones tomorrow.

Every year since 2007, I have celebrated Thanksgiving with my rotary house friends that I met during my first months here. The original Thanksgiving was a special day because my American classmates were visiting me from Germany and Kay, known as “Patrick” back then, made an unexpected decision to join at the last minute.

We were all students at the time and didn’t have much money. I remember that I didn’t have 100CHF for a turkey, so I bought several chicken breasts to feed over 20 people. (Hah!)  We also didn’t have an electric mixer, so we enlisted the help of Kay to beat the cream for the whipped cream.

We all took turns whipping the cream. It was really tiring!It ended up being my last visit with Kay before I left, where I hugged him for the first time, hoping he would get the hint that I liked him. (He didn’t.)

It might have taken us awhile to get started after that, but I’m pretty sure if he had never come to Thanksgiving that we would not be together right now. So every time we celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends, I am reminded of my beginning in Switzerland and thankful for all the time I have with my friends here after what was supposed to be a three month internship.

Each year we set a date in the autumn that works for all of us, which is quite difficult with two musicians in the bunch. One of the girls is Canadian, so we try to do it between Canadian and American Thanksgiving, but last year she was so busy we had to have it the first weekend in December.

This year we were also slated to have it December 6th, but some schedules changed at the last minute and we managed to have it the weekend before Halloween before Kay left for a month.

Last year we hosted, but we take turns, so this year it was at someone’s house in Zürich. They made sure to ask about my gluten-free needs and I planned to take some GF stuffing and pie.

Thinking I would have until December to practise some GF pie-making, I only had a coupe days to find a recipe and hope that my first gluten-free crust would not be a disaster.

I was really happy that the dough from this recipe was fairly easy to work with for gluten-free and that it tasted fine. It was too sticky to pinch the edges well, so I had to use a fork to make the decorative edging.

I absolutely adore our friend Thanksgivings. It is always lovely to catch up with friends and I always look forward to enjoying a delicious, filling meal with great wine.

What is there not to love about Thanksgiving? Do you ever do a separate one with your friends?