The things we do for national holidays

Tomorrow was shaping up to be a meatless Thanksgiving. Having been forced to turn down Harry's dinner invitation because of our class reading tomorrow night, I was planning to attend Danielle's Creative Writing Pre-Reading Thanksgiving Dinner. Danielle being a vegetarian and the rest of us being lazy/inept, there will be no turkey at Danielle's flat, but there may be macaroni and cheese.

I had resigned myself to a turkeyless day when I received an e-mail from Leigh this morning. She and Cali are planning a Thanksgiving luncheon tomorrow. They're making the turkey and two pies (I knew those cans of pumpkin in the store display would go to good use!), and everyone else is to bring a dish.

Well, I figured I could do dressing.

There are two ways to go about dressing: buy the Paxo box and add water, or suck it up and actually attempt something homemade. Fine, I thought, enough instant couscous and microwaved peas, this is a national holiday, damn it. It deserves something better than my ill-fated Canadian Thanskgiving rolls.

Taking Rosanna the Cooking Light Intern's advice, I hopped onto their website and started looking for recipes. The first that sounded good was a dirty rice stuffing. I like dirty rice. I like stuffing. What the hell.

Then I started reading the recipe...Andouille sausage (This is the country that lives on black pudding, surely they have something), chicken livers (Um...no), 6 cups long-grain rice (Easy enough), 3 cups chicken broth (My favorite form of hot sodium), olive oil (Got it already), celery, onions, garlic (Just this once), green bell pepper (Substituting red - it's my dressing!), Cajun seasoning (Wait a minute...)

Undaunted, I headed off to Tesco for a little pre-breakfast grocery shopping, where I (inevitably) encountered a few difficulties:

1) This is the UK, Land of Grams. Do we know how many grams of rice go into a cup? We bought a kilo and we're guessing.

2) Why does chicken broth not exist at my Tesco?!? I'm resorting to bullion cubes.

3) Speaking of things that don't exist at Tesco..."Cajun seasoning." Yeah. Not going to happen. We're using the all-purpose savory seasoning mix already in my cupboard and pretending.

4) And as far as sausage goes, we have acquired half a kilo of Tesco's half-fat pork sausages and we're going to pretend. There is no Jimmy Dean over here. There is no Andouille sausage, either. If Mary ever reads this, she will probably pass out at my poor attempt to replicate her regional cuisine in Scotland.

Armed with £7 of assorted vaguely appropriate items, a new box of oatmeal, and toilet tissue, I headed back to the dorm to fit it all into the fridge. Since Amber left this morning for a two-month sojurn in Antarctica (yeah...we're just going to Firbush in Creative Writing), there was actually adequate fridge space. This gave me a moment to contemplate my package of sausages. What does one do with eight pork sausages, anyway? Fortunately, my cleaning lady walked in.

"Stupid question," I began, "but how does one cook sausages? I've never really cooked before."
She gave me a horribly pained look. "You've no' cooked before?"
"Not really. Not sausages. See, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I'm trying to make this dressing...and Tesco has nothing Cajun..."
She patted my arm and explained that ten to fifteen minutes on the grill will do them nicely.

Great. All I have to do tomorrow is figure out which pot can work as a Dutch oven, get out my oatmeal freebie measuring cups (each of which holds about 2/3 cup water) and do a lot of guessing, finely chop many smelly vegetables using my mad knife skills, and grill sausages. I can do this.

My mother's comment: "I can hardly wait to hear how this turns out. You made me laugh out loud at 3:45am!"

Mom, you're not helping my self confidence, here.