Happy Thanksgiving! How are you celebrating your Thanksgivings in Sweden this year?

Last year, I lamented over the fact that Thanksgiving in Sweden, or probably anywhere away from your family, just isn’t the same as back home in the US, especially since no one else in Sweden celebrates. This year’s the same so I was ready to forego it completely, but my lovely fiancée insisted that we do something to celebrate… and so celebrate we will!

But first, let’s start with what I’m thankful for:

• I’m thankful for my family and friends. Especially for the health of my parents who are getting older and sicker 🙁
• I’m thankful for having a fun and challenging job where I get to work with intelligent and creative people.
• I’m thankful for having the means to live comfortably.
• I’m thankful that I’m living in a country that is has made itself so welcoming to me … and despite the weird Swedishisms that I come across, it’s still a great place to live.

Next, food and wine!

Tonight we’re going to repeat a highly successful hack from last year – rotisserie chicken from ICA. In addition to that, I already made a pecan pie last night, so today we’re going to bake some cornbread and serve some sweet potato mash and green beans with the chicken. All together with a good bottle of red wine. I’m actually not sure which bottle we’ll crack open, but we have a lot at home so I’m sure we’ll find something good. Maybe my Seghesio Sonoma wine — a perennial favorite.

I haven’t really been keeping an eye on Black Friday sales in Sweden but I did see that Amazon had a great deal on the Amazon Echo Dot (2nd Gen) at $29.99 and the Amazon Echo (2nd gen) at $79.99. I picked up one of each to set up with my Denon HEOS Bar and Subwoofer which I bought a few months ago… and because when I was baking the pecan pie yesterday, it was incredibly frustrating not to be able to convert unit measurements from ounces to milliliter or grams on the fly. I had to separately look up each and every conversion.

In any case, Sweden has taken up Black Friday even more seriously this year. Most stores, online and offline, are offering some sort of discount for their products. First Advent is also coming up on December 3 so stores are going from Black Friday to Cyber Monday and almost directly into their “advent calendar sales” where they discount one item each day until Christmas. No one can say that Sweden isn’t just as shopping-obsessed!

Happy #trulyswedish Thanksgiving to everyone!