My 1st Thanksgiving!!

So I got to celebrate my 1st Thanksgiving and it was lovely. I was so chuffed to be invited to spend it with Carrie boyfriend Nick's family, who live about 30 mins from downtown Chicago in a place called La Grainge ( A Chicago Suburb) 

To give you a little background Thanksgiving Day is always celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November and has been an annual tradition in the US since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Ab Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated. It is created to give thanks to God for helping the Pilgrims if the Plymouth Colony survive their first brutal winter in New England. The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days.

The morning of Thanksgiving I got up to check emails and try and get through work before heading over to Nicks in the afternoon when I suddenly heard a loud banging! I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was until I looked down State Street and saw a parade. I was so excited I grabbed my coat and ran outside!

It really felt like Christmas. The day before, people were winding down and leaving around lunchtime (just like Christmas Eve) all the lights and Christmas decorations were up and after the parade the streets were practically empty! I felt all festive and dreamy!!

We headed over to Nicks in the afternoon and again it felt like Christmas day. His mum was in the kitchen cooking away, the table was all set and every sat round chatting and watching telly whilst the rest of the family arrived.

When we did eventually sit down to eat (me and Carrie were close to eating our hands we were so hungry!) it was more food than I have seen for a while. We had lots of different courses some of which inspired by the Polish side of the family.

Round 1
Chili cheese dip and chips, coleslaw and freshly baked bread

Round 2

Crusted fillet of Veal 
Round 3

Pierogi - sweet cheese, Cheddar cheese, horseradish
Kapusta - pickled cabbage

Round 4

Turkey
Stuffing
Corn
Mash Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Cranberries and Gravy

Round 5

Banana cream pastry

Some of the gorgeous desserts!
Notice the English influence bottom right - mince pies donated by moi!!

Round 6

Champagne
Deserts of all kinds; cupcakes, pumpkin/apple pies, creme brulee


Food comas all around as you can imagine. When we got to Round 6 I could not physically fit anything - drink included into my belly!

Uncle Tom reading out some of the answers!

We also had a great laugh playing the dictionary game (one of which I am introducing to my family this Christmas). The leader of the game goes through the monster dictionary and picks crazy words and their meanings. The players then get given a piece of paper to write a silly explanation for what they think it might be (you want the other players to pick your answer). The leader then reads all of them out including the correct one. The players have to pick what they think is the right answer. If you get the answer right you get 2 points and you get a point for every person who thought it was your answer....it was hilarious!

Lovebirds - Carrie and Nick



Me and Carrie



The whole family

The day was so lovely and I felt like one of the family, Nick's mum even bought me a little gift

Definitely a great 1st Thanksgiving experience all round!

Pub Crawl - Chicago style....in a Trolley!

Had the most hilarious night Saturday...I got to experience a Trolley!! Its basically the Chicago term for 'pub crawl'! When we turned up Carrie and the girls were already drunk - the Trolley basically drives around ( a bit like a party bus) whilst the guests get merry! We then ended up at a place called 'The Hangout' which plays the best 80's music. We bopped the night away to Bonjovi and Tony Basal's 'Oh Micky your so fine'!!!



Me, Carrie & Corey



Corey, Carrie & Whitney




Me & Whitney



Magnificent Mile Lights Festival Parade 2010

Every year in Chicago they hold the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival and its the official kick off of the Christmas season in Chicago. They have a Mickey Mouse parade illuminating over one million lights along Michigan Avenue.

It was such a perfect day. Although it was the first day I had to pull out 'the coat' by this I mean the winter coat which could double up as a duvet!! It was so 'Christmassy' and the fireworks were amazing! Plus I got to spend it with a friend which was lovely.

Good ol' Mickey Mouse!

LA baby yeah!!

So recently treated myself to a little bit of LA love! Wow what a place! Its completely the other end of the spectrum from Chicago. Here I live downtown where I can walk to everything, you can't do that in LA you need a car for everything so convertible Mustang it was - only the best!! Here its been an average of 50-60 degrees, in LA it was an average of 80 degrees!!

I managed to squeeze a lot into the few days there:

Checked out Hollywood and mingled with the stars!

Then headed out to Santa Monica. Now this is a place I could see myself living. sun, sand and shops...heaven!

And shop heaven....

But most importantly I just chilled!

Well not all the time!

Getting together with friends is the same no matter where you are!

Carrie introduced me to more of her friends last night. Loads of guys she went to Purdue College with. We had such a great night and it was just like being back at home with friends. First we all went to this guy Ron's house and he had cooked a yummy dinner. Carrie then introduced me to the delights of Scotch –A- Roo’s! It's the most yummy desert but god only knows how many calories are in it!

Ingredients

1 cup sugar 

1 cup white karo syrup 

1 cup peanut butter 

6 -cups rice krispies 

6 oz pkg semi-sweet chips 

6 oz pkg butterscotch chips 

Preparation

1. Put sugar & karo in a large pot. Bring to small boil, at the sight of 1st bubble, turn off heat and remove pot from stove.
2. Stir in peanut butter.
3. Pour mixture into bowl with rice krispies, mix well.
4. Pour into pan.
5. Melt chips together in microwave, start with 1 min, stir, do 2nd min, stir and repeat until melted, do not over cook or will burn.
6. Spread mixture on top of krispie mix.
7. Let completely cool before cutting.



Lovely Carrie making the Scotch-A-Roo's

We then sat around drinking and playing card games. I learnt how to plays 'Kings' and didn't do too badly!
Once we had got through most of the drink at Ron's we headed over to a bar in Lincoln Park - The Lion's Head. It's really cool you can buy long tubes of beer which sits in a little cone holder on the tables. It has a tap on it so you and your friends don't have to keep going to the bar.

The whole night was really fun - slightly hazy from The Lion's Head onwards however and HANGOVER CENTRAL this morning!!!!

Hot Chocolate 5K

I took part in a charity race at the weekend and it was really fun! It was organised by RAM Racing in aid of the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute.


The race started at 7.40am so had to get up at 6am! Not ideal timing if it had been on the Sunday then it would have actually been light outside at that time (clocks went back an hour Sunday morning). Therefore 6am = pitch black + freezing cold!


Luckily the night before I had gone to Old Navy (added onto the Rachel's favorite shops list!) and bought a thermal/fleece jumper and gloves.

It was really fun and lovely to be so near the lake that early and see the sun rise. The only thing that I would say is that the course was not that well thought out; there were 35,000 people racing and lots of bottle necks, in particular when they were giving out the Gatorade.

The best part of all was the end...not just because of the obvious but we got this....

Hot melted Ghirardelli

Election day - Candidates rip each other to shreds!!

November 2nd = Election day in the US (It occurs on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The earliest possible date is November 2nd  and the latest possible date is November 8th.

One noticeable difference in the run up to Election Day here has been the marketing campaigns used by each candidate. I just had to share some of the commercials as it is quite unbelievable what they are allowed to say. The marketing laws in the UK are very different!

It's been particularly bad recently and especially before and after the news. I have to admit a lot of them make me laugh more than anything!! A lot of them could be mistaken for a Jerry Springer commercial!