Cooking With Nothing – Finding Eden

This is my 12 foot square kitchen in my apartment in Moscow on Thanksgiving 2020

Somehow everywhere I live, I end up renting an apartment that doesn’t have room for a microwave (or I’m just too cheap to buy one).

I learned how to cook in the US and tons of American recipes tell you to just “pop [something] in the microwave.” At first I really missed it, but after a while without it, it’s not so hard to live without.

Here are my tips and tricks to get by without a microwave:

You should buy a tiny pot and a tiny frying pan specifically for reheating.
- When I set up a new kitchen I always buy a HUGE pot for soups and a HUGE frying pan thinking that’s all I need, but eventually I get annoyed having to wash them by hand every single time I warm anything up.
An electric kettle will make you hate your life a lot less, especially as an American who grew up without one.
Store your leftovers in oven safe dishes instead of plastic if you can. Or even a tin baking dish with plastic wrap if you are too cheap for glass leftover dishes.
When you need to melt butter for a baking project, stick it in a bowl and put it in the oven while it warms up. You’ll be way less likely to burn it than if you do it on the stove, you will only have to wash a bowl instead of a pot, and you will have free hands to prep other stuff rather than watching the butter.

Obviously none of this is rocket science, but you never know what might be helpful to someone else.

An American Thanksgiving Abroad

You’ll be hard pressed to find a full Turkey in most places besides the US. Your best options for a replacement would be some kind of other bird if you’re going for aesthetic- duck, hen, maybe a goose, or if you are really set on turkey, it’s becoming far more popular to eat turkey breasts throughout Europe. They aren’t too much more expensive than chicken breasts, and you can usually find huge uncut portions. Toss one of those in the oven, and you have beautiful, easy to cook and portion turkey breast! The hardest part of Thanksgiving is over!

Truly, beyond hunting for a bird, the worst part about prepping a Thanksgiving abroad is that absolutely everything needs to be from scratch. In the US you can buy stuff like frozen pie crusts, or pie crust mixes, Crisco, cans of pumpkin, boxed stuffing mixes, and most importantly cream of mushroom soup. I can’t tell you how much I miss Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, even when it’s not Thanksgiving.

Of course everything *can* be made from scratch, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially in teeny tiny European kitchens.

Pies and breads should be cooked the day before, mostly because they are the most labor intensive, and also because they can be served cold. Pies should also be one of the first things you make because homemade pie crust is so finnicky, and turns out better when it’s refrigerated overnight, so it should really be started on Tuesday, then rolled out and cooked on Wednesday.

Wednesday night you should peel and prep your veggies, and do a final check that you have everything before you start bright and early the next day.

I am also of the opinion that if you only have the day of to prepare, you shouldn’t try to make absolutely everything- I limit my sides to mashed potatoes, obviously, stuffing, my favorite, and a real vegetable, like carrots, just because you should.

But if you have an extra day, it’s manageable to do everything if it’s in advance. This year I made rolls, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, turkey, an apple pie and apple cider, and somehow it was the easiest Thanksgiving I’ve had abroad yet because I had an extra day of prep time! I made the rolls and the pie the day before and since I have no Campbell’s, I prepped this recipe for my green bean casserole: https://www.culinaryhill.com/homemade-cream-of-mushroom-soup/ (It was a lifesaver.)

The next day I was surprised that I had everything done a couple hours before schedule! Go me!

It’s easy to give up and skip Thanksgiving, after all, it’s not like you’ll have work off, or have any friends that can come over on a Thursday, but I really do think it’s worth it to put it all together. A little piece of home for you to share with your foreign friends who may never get to experience another American Thanksgiving!