Andrew Brennan

Here’s a recap of Thanksgiving weekend–it was over two weeks ago, but better late than never, right?

Thanksgiving was awesome–the Ejsmond-Freys let us use their house(s) in Shepherd’s Bush. We hosted and did most of the cooking/reheating at Sophie’s but did the turkeys at Gordon’s two blocks away. Gordon has a double oven (score!), so there was plenty of space for both turkeys.  We covered the birds with butter and bacon (as always) and cooked them in bags this year (Anthony’s cousin Jeff’s idea), and it worked really well.

Yannis came down from Oxford the night before and helped us cook all day at Sophie’s–he made this great halloumi stuffing that went in the turkeys, as well as a spinach pie, roast vegetables, bean casserole and numerous other things. Emma was around for most of the day too helping to cook–it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way, mostly because Anthony took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work to do all the mashed potatoes (25 lbs worth) and sausage stuffing (with 12 lbs of sausage). In years past we’ve tried to do everything on the day, which gets difficult with one oven.

We had an unprecedented turnout as well–all told, counting people just passing through the EF house but eating something, we had 37 people there. The food and company were great–hopefully we’ll be able to top things next year.

Early on Friday I flew to Dublin for a rowing reunion–Dominic hosted six of us who rowed at Oxford in 2005/6. Friday was pub lunch, seeing some sights in Dublin, then hitting the town–we went to Cafe en Seine (awful) then Howl at the Moon (better).

On Saturday we went to the Guinness Storehouse, which was cooler than I expected it to be–they do a good job of making the beer-making process seem interesting, and the floor on Guinness advertising was pretty neat. We caught half of the Wales-Australia rugby match at one of the pubs inside the building, then half of us split off and wandered back into city center.

That night after some drinking games (like fives, above) we went to Flannery’s where there was some very silly dancing going on. Then Sunday we all headed back relatively early. It was a very fun weekend, and awesome to see everybody, especially the guys (Michiel, Dominic, Stephan, Bruce) who aren’t based in London. Hopefully the next group trip won’t take as long as this one did to organize, and hopefully it will be someplace warm like Croatia.