Thanksgiving was a hodgepodge of emotions for me.  I was missing my family and our traditional celebration and, akin to the last post’s theme, I was scared of spending the holiday alone.  It was a ridiculous fear that sporadically loomed around me as I cooked for friends who said they were coming to dinner.  But the rest of the time I felt eager to share my cooking and the holiday with people I had befriended here. 
I love cooking almost as much as I love eating.

I chose a simple dinner plan with a little Spanish fusion: mashed sweet potatoes with walnuts (porque aparentemente, en la tierra de españa, las pacanas no existen – a southern girl’s Thanksgiving nightmare), green beans with fried onions and a tapas style deli turkey, cheese and bread plate accompanied with homemade deviled eggs. It was very un-Spanish of me to leave out the jamón for tapas, but no one would have eaten the turkey if I hadn’t. One friend brought some cookies from the Monasterio del Corpus Christi and everyone one else brought Spanish booze.

A couple of friends asked me how Thanksgiving came to be and what exactly is celebrated.  I told them bits of the cheery kid story I knew from school, but mentioned it leaves out some darker facts. I told them I cherish the holiday because it’s always such a great celebration with loved ones I don’t regularly see.
I didn’t get to see those relatives this year, but this Thanksgiving turned out to be particularly special for a lot of other reasons. 

I felt so much gratitude as I looked around the table at these people I hadn’t known for very long -and who were all just meeting each other for the first time- come together to share the unfamiliar occasion with me.
Shortly after dinner, my sister Skyped in as a response to the text I forgot I sent her when one friend requested to meet my family.  It was such a beautiful thing to see them and sort of combine our celebrations for a moment.
Stories and jokes spoken in a mix of Spanish, German and English continued through the evening while my friends nibbled on cookies and worked through a second bottle of wine. 

The parting was a little emotional because I knew it was likely the last time I’d see them in the flesh.  Luckily, things like Skype make it seem like we aren’t so far away.
   
Travelling solo can be hard, but with the hardest days come the best ones, too.  This was one of the best.

I want to give you the long history of the origin of Halloween and how it has transformed into the modern-day celebration of the 21^st century, but there’s a reason I am not a history teacher.  Luckily, the History Channel can help if you want to know more about the evolution of the tradition. 

I loved Halloween as a kid for lots of reasons: creepy shit, candy, witches, princesses, superheroes.  It was the only time of the year when I could wear mom’s makeup and not get in trouble.  I was allowed to eat almost as much candy as I could stomach.  I could try to scare the bejesus out of people without reprimand.

The holiday became one of my favorite days to celebrate at work when I realized my employer didn’t care about a little dress-up.  This is the first year in several I didn’t have a place to go and show-off my creativity and Madrid isn’t exactly hip to the holiday.  My Spanish teacher nor my bnb host’s son knew of any special Halloween things happening, so I took my search to FB.  I found a party event near my apartment, and discovered it was for children.  Only.  I might have been slightly embarrassed as I didn’t have a child, but no one could see my real face, so, eh, I didn’t feel that weird.  I left the party and walked around the ritzy barrio de Salamanca in hopes to frighten the affluent shoppers.  Sadly, I don’t think anyone was scared, but I had a good time being silly.  I met a friend for drinks later in the evening. 

While I was trying to come up with a Halloween costume, I thought to myself, what is actually scary.  I looked up some real-life crazies to get ideas and suddenly, I pictured a creepy clown saying, aren’t we fucking funny?  And I knew – he’s the one.  I actually wasn’t aware that Sid Haig had recently passed which made the costume idea kind of weird yet even more Halloween appropriate.

Well, you are probably wondering how all of this sexy came together and I’m going to tell you. 
I planned on using only the watercolor paints I brought with me (which I think are non-toxic) to paint my face.  The trial using them went well enough, but I worried about the application directly on my skin.  I found a costume store about a mile walk from my apartment where I picked up some liquid white face paint to use as a base and a red bow tie to try to complete the Captain Spaulding look.  I didn’t like the beards the shop offered and they were more than I wanted to spend.  I looked up some tutorials on homemade beards and read something about cotton.  I didn’t watch the tutorial.  I just knew right away the cotton idea sounded good.  The tutorial I did follow was for a homemade glue paste of flour, water and salt.  I wanted to buy eyelash glue as I’ve had success with that in the past for things besides eyelashes, but like the beards, it was more than I was willing to spend.  The makeup store I stopped at for the eyelash glue and cotton didn’t have cotton, but everything worked out fine.  I wound up walking in the wrong direction on my way back to the apartment (trick) and came across a pharmacy with cotton for less than a euro (or treat).  I spent €5.79 for white face paint, a bag of cotton and a red bow tie. 

I used a mix of black watercolor paint, charcoal pencil and black eye makeup to color the cotton as best I could.  These are all things I had stowed away in my luggage.  I made my glue paste using the no cook recipe from this site.  I lessened the amount considerably and eyeballed the ingredient measurements.  I read their note about how they didn’t know which recipe might be safe for skin, so I went for the one I could make with what I had, didn’t require cooking, and wasn’t noted as very, very strong as my ultimate goal wasn’t to have a permanent beard. 

This shit held up really well.  So well, in fact, that my attempts to smile, laugh or simply open my mouth to yawn were extremely restricted.  Not a flexible glue, FYI.  At the end of the night, everything came off fine with some soap, a little body scrub and warm water.  If you try this recipe for yourself, then use sparingly when applying and lots of warm water when trying to remove it and please don’t accidentally rip off your eyebrows.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!