Taste of Home

As our friends and family in America joined together in the spirit of Thanksgiving, celebrating with good company and good food, Jeffrey and I also joined in to give thanks. But things are different here in SE Asia, and we realized that it would be just as difficult to fly all our loved ones here to celebrate with us as it would be to try make a whole thanksgiving meal. So what could we feasibly do? After scratching our brains and talking things through, we decided to fore go turkeys and mashed potatoes this year, and try our hands at making – pancakes!

Making the mix

On Friday, November 26, 2010, MCC Tha Thom staff and district partners were hosting a farewell party for our Project Manager. Even though it was the day after Thanksgiving, we decided to contribute our pancakes to the mix of traditional Lao dishes. We weren’t sure at first if the pancakes would turn out as we were missing milk, but we decided that sweetened condensed milk is close enough as long it is watered down thoroughly. We started cooking them over a fire with our cast iron skillet (the most awesome find during our shopping for kitchen accessories). The pancakes drew quite a crowd. Our district partners even asked to try their hand at cooking them.

Help from District partner

Our 'Thanksgiving' feast

In the end we had enough small pancakes for forty people, who apparently, enjoyed them greatly because there were none left over for breakfast! Next year we may try to make the more traditional Thanksgiving dishes, but we also might just keep pancakes in the back of our mind.
(Thank you to Wendy Martin for the pictures.)
Posted by Kaarina