Bringing Thanksgiving With Me No Matter Where I Am

And a Spain friendly recipe for making delicious pumpkin pie!

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays… mainly because the whole point of it is to spend time with loved ones and eat a lot of yummy food.

I haven’t actually been in the US to celebrate it since… 2010? Or possibly before that. Needless to say, a long time ago.

Living abroad, Thanksgiving isn’t a thing. I remember when my family first moved to Spain when I was nine, I was so confused why people didn’t celebrate it. Over the years, I’ve made it my mission to make sure that I take Thanksgiving with me no matter where I am. It might look different to the more traditional Thanksgiving dinners that took place all over the US this last Thursday, but the most important themes remain the same: sharing yummy food with loved ones.

We’ve made it a tradition with our friends over the years that everyone brings a favorite dish from their country that they tend to eat at this time of year. Our group of friends is quite international, so it’s really fun to share new foods with each other.

I have always tried to do my best to have a least a few of my favorite traditional Thanksgiving staples: turkey, pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. It’s not always possible to find all of the ingredients that we can easily pick up in any grocery store in the US. One thing that’s pretty much impossible to find is canned pumpkin puree. And if you can find it, it’s ridiculously expensive.

Butternut Squash for the Win

When I first moved here I tried to source actual pumpkins to make it, but I’ve found that the best and most similar flavor to the famous Libby’s pumpkin puree isn’t actually pumpkin but butternut squash!

So how do you make the “pumpkin” (butternut squash) puree? Roast it with the skin on until the squash is super soft so that you can easily run a spoon through it, scoop it out of the skin and then blend it. Simple as that! On average a medium leaning towards large butternut squash makes enough puree for two pies.

So without further ado, here’s my Spain friendly Pumpkin Pie recipe: