Canadian Thanksgiving

You guys! It's a thing! In Canada they celebrating Thanksgiving about a month before we in the States do! Since there is no poor excuse to eat tasty food, we Americans celebrated this year with our Canadian friends!

Some differences: No Pilgrims and Indians. This is nice, since 1) That never happened. and 2) We're not really focusing that much on that in the States either, having come to terms with the fact that we slaughtered so many of them instead of ignoring it.

Another difference, as I said, is Canadians celebrate in October, and over the weekend too. They eat on Sunday and get Monday off to relax.

Finally, we had our own difference. Though Canadian food is basically the same as American food on Thanksgiving, we made poutine and beaver tails. Not only do with live in a place with only hot plates for cooking and where all Western food is crazy expensive, but our Canadian friends love to feed us goofy Canadian food!

First, poutine (pronounce is POO-tin, not poo-TEEN, or Lianne will be cross and not feed you any). So for those of you who don't know, this dish is served at fast (and slow) food places all over Canada. Like McDonalds. It consists of French fries smothered in gravy and cheese curd and it is delicious.

So you start for homemade fries by slicing your potatos and frying them in a big ole vat of oil.

Lianne taught me the excellent double frying methid for the crispiest french fries from her chip stand days. First you blanch those little guys in oil and take them out when they are just cooked though. Then fry again til crispy!

While you're frying those taters, get to work on the gravy. Being in Africa, we used a gravy packet, but any good gravy recipe will likely be tastier. I dunno what we used for the cheese, but it was really good. traditionally, you should use cheese curd. I wasn't really a part of the cooking process, so I don't know any measurements, but I think it's safe to judge this part with your eyes and tongue.

Now, the beaver tails. As you've probably guessed, we did not go out and hunt down the elusive African beaver in order to fry up his tail and eat it for dessert. Beaver tails are a lot like American elephant ears, but, since apparently no one outside the MidWest eats elephant ears at the fair, I'll explain further: fried dough topped with brown sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice.

Since I'm writing this for my Africa blog and only copying it over to my cooking blog, I'll just toss in a link to a beaver tail dough recipe, rather than write the thing out.

So, step one - make that dough!



The you shape it into some semblance of a flat circle and fry is briefly on both sides.

[Again, you photo-uploading is not working properly. But you know what fried dough looks like, and you can imagine it being topped with copious amounts of brown sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice, right? Good.]

Then, eat!

All in all, a delicious, ridiculously unhealthy time was had by all!