Saturday, November 24, 2007

Picture from Thanksgiving dinner--and a real apple pie


I’ve just come back from a real Thanksgiving dinner with some friends—turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and the rest. Even in Kazakhstan, it is possible to celebrate in true American fashion. My contribution was the apple pie. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture before cutting into the pie, but this picture should give an idea of what it looked like. The design was rather tongue in cheek—and something of a joke among the Fulbrighters (a “C” surrounded by rays of sunlight). It is surprisingly difficult to bake a pie in an oven without a temperature gauge, and also in a square pan rather than the usual circular shape (the dough drapes differently in a square pan). Although I understand that baking the pie was easier than roasting the turkey. Stoves over here are rather small, and in order to keep the oven door completely closed, it was apparently necessary to prop the kitchen table against the oven. Over here, ingenuity is essential!

Tomorrow evening it is off to the drama theater for a Russian play. I don’t know what it is, yet—but it should be interesting. We’ll see how good my Russian is (or isn’t). Then on Tuesday, I will likely be going to see the classic Shakespearean play “Gamlet”. Right now, it is time to head off to bed and sleep off the effects of too much dessert. I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to start walking off all the pie…but it was worth it!