Celebrating Thanksgiving after a snowy night in Beijing

A week before the last Saturday in November, we booked our order for a traditional turkey from Lily's American Diner in Beijing.

It was only for half a bird, but we had a serious craving for a meal that reminded us of home.

Ironic.

We never really bought any of those Butterball turkeys when we were back in New Jersey.

Instead, we would buy two grilled chickens on Thanksgiving Day itself at a place called Boston Market and pick up a Filipino noodle dish called "pancit" as an addition to the feast.

The problem we had with turkey meat is it dried easily, turned hard and tasted like something we would get if we were laid up in a hospital.

For me, what made it special was that my wife made her own stuffing and gravy.

She would use ground pork, chopped apples, onions, breadcrumbs, raisins and seasoning. She would cook them using a beef or chicken stock and then let it cool down.

We would then make our own cranberry sauce from scratch, mixing it with a dash of lemon and brown sugar.

When she was in the mood, she baked her own fruitcake.

The cake would be doused heavily in brandy where you can smell and taste the liquor. She would prepare it with fruit glaze, maraschino cherries, and nuts. The cake would be overloaded with the cherries and the nuts.

It would then go into the fridge for a day or more. There would be enough for our family of two to last for weeks into Christmas.

We put a down payment for the turkey we had ordered in Beijing.

The night before we picked it up, snow showers began to pelt my face as we wound up a shift and I made my way home to the apartment in the China Daily compound with another editor. When I woke up the following morning, more than an inch of snow covered the ground and cars parked around the property.

The snow hung on the trees, weighing down the branches in the very soft sunlight of a somewhat cloudy day.

A woman carefully swept the snow that covered her car.

We made our way to Lily's in Sanlitun area by Didi, arriving right on the dot at the 10:30 am pickup time. The restaurant had already called us to make sure we were going to pick up our order.

After picking up the bird, the gravy and the stuffing, we scampered back to our apartment the same way we got there. The bird and gravy were warm, the skin crispy as we sat down for our Thanksgiving meal.

The white meat of the turkey was tasty when I covered it liberally with gravy.

We chatted away about the Thanksgivings back home.

It was the first Thanksgiving we had celebrated outside the United States in 21 years.

We both missed our daughter who is living in Philadelphia. I also missed my father-in-law who passed on a dozen years ago and who would have been over 100 years old if he were still around.

Instead of recycling the remaining turkey into sandwiches, my wife turned it into a clear broth soup that would keep for the rest of the week.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday in the United States because of the universal quality it holds. We remember it to honor those still around and the ones no longer here.

For immigrants like us, there is a special quality to the holiday that we cling to. That includes family and well, pigging out.

Thanksgiving in China reminds us of our home halfway round the planet. In many ways, it is a bittersweet memory.