A lot of tradition and a few gourmet touches mean a Thanksgiving unlikely to be repeated

Last entry I wrote that eight courses, with balance and discretion, can leave you feeling light and energised. At the opposite end of this spectrum we have Thanksgiving, where just a few courses can leave you feeling like you've swallowed lead weights and need a nap immediately. Still, it had to be done.

As I establish the routines of my married life, there are a handful of traditions, some family and some American, I'm passionate about keeping alive. At the top of this list is Thanksgiving. You don't realise just how wonderful this holiday is until you move to a country without it. A day specifically set aside to count your blessings and give thanks for them. A holiday filled with family and friends, but without the pressure of gifts or excessive decoration. A formal start to the Christmas season.

These things have nothing to do with food, and yet the procession of dishes required at the table is as formulaic as the words of a church service.

It's just not Thanksgiving without ...

If you're American born and bred, you'll end this sentence with three or four essential dishes. (In addition to the turkey, of course.) While the basic components are the same, every region and every family has its own culinary traditions, without which the holiday would not be complete. Americans have no problem with variety at Christmas, but don't mess with the Thanksgiving menu!

We had six friends over, and I wanted to produce a classic Midwestern, Ferrara/Wallemann family table. The dishes I grew up with.

Five things strike you immediately when putting together this particular meal instead of our typical dinner party:

1. The predominant elements of the Thanksgiving menu are starch and sugar. Nobody planning a balanced meal would ever whip this up.
2. The number of side dishes is wildly out of proportion with the mains.
3. Traditional Thanksgiving recipes rely heavily on processed food products (Libby's tinned pumpkin, French's fried potatoes, Karo syrup, tinned sweet potato) that are hard to find here, requiring specialist sourcing or timely work-arounds.
4. Turkey is a rare bird here. Forget the loss-leader approach, where you get your free 20-pound Butterball when you spend $200 at Schucks. You can't even find frozen turkeys here outside of Christmas, which forces you to order birds direct from specialist farms. Making this menu far more expensive than the typical dinner party.
5. Thanksgiving is usually a pot luck affair, with everyone bringing a dish. It's actually a hell of a lot of work if you're doing it all yourself. But you can't really ask the Brits to bring anything, because they aren't familiar with the traditional recipes.

I write this last point as a reminder to myself for next year. I've rolled out all the traditional dishes once. Next time, I'll be doing a Thanksgiving-themed dinner party instead, with more balance, fewer sides and a lot less work. But for the inaugural Thanksgiving in the Piers Bencard household, I think we can proclaim a success.

So what featured in this Midwestern feast? Guests nibbled on crab dip and cheese and sausage balls as everyone gathered. The latter is always a big hit, simply mixing Bisquick with cheese and cooked sausage, pressing into bite sized balls and baking. No Bisquick in this country, however, so there's the first of the "convenience" recipes that took extra time.

My first course brought one of the three gourmet twists I incorporated into the meal: peanut soup. Most Midwestern Thanksgivings aren't formal enough to get a first course. You nibble on appetisers in the kitchen until the buffet is laid, then fill your plate in one go. But I thought that might be a step too casual for the Brits (and certainly for my husband), and I like an excuse to get out my massive but rarely-used Portmeirion soup tureen. The soup recipe is from the King's Arms pub in Williamsburg and, I think, really gets at the soul of colonial America.

Next, to the main event. Second gourmet touch: brining the turkey. We normally just slathered the bird with butter and threw it in the oven, or on the Weber. A bird as expensive as most Americans' grocery bill for the entire Thanksgiving meal needed special care and attention. Taking Saveur magazine's regional holiday guide to heart, I chose their Midwestern recipe for cider- and sage-brined turkey. The night before cooking, you boil up cider, sage, salt and sugar into a solution, add more water and plunge the turkey into it overnight. Some chemical magic takes place to make the bird retain moisture and take in the subtle flavour of the sage. I don't know whether it was the brining, or the rare breed, but this was the best turkey to ever grace a Ferrara Thanksgiving table.

Alongside, we were in deeply traditional territory. The family stuffing: an everything-but-the-kitchen sink hybrid of Wallemann and Ferrara recipes, blending stale bread with wild rice, toasted pecans, sausage, apples and herbs for a side dish that's a meal in itself. Sweet potato crisp from the Blue Owl in Kimmswick, Missouri. A dead simple mix of tinned sweet potatoes and cream cheese, topped with chopped apples and cranberries, then an oatmeal, sugar and butter crumble. Made a lot more complicated in a country without the tins, forcing you to roast and prep the potatoes in advance. Which, I have to admit, made for a much better dish that wasn't so cloyingly sweet, though my husband still found it rather pointless. The classic mushroom soup and green bean casserole. (Vile. What a way to ruin both green beans and fried onions, proclaimed the love of my life.) Spinach loaf. Frozen, drained spinach mixed with butter, pine nuts, basil and eggs and banged into a loaf pan to cook, then cut and served in slices. Much to my surprise, Mr. B quite liked this one. Mashed potatoes. Cranberry Sauce. Sheila came up with two cans of the jellied stuff ... another unobtainable, foreign item here ... and I made my usual from scratch with orange and port.

Dessert brought my final gourmet innovation. Ferraras are content with pumpkin pies with a bit of Cool Whip on top. We need nothing else to mess with the purity of this delight. But most Europeans only try pumpkin pie grudgingly (see 29.11.08) and Cool Whip is both unobtainable, and would be considered an abomination by residents of this land of premium dairy products. I thought wider variety on the dessert plate was in order. Though pumpkin was essential, and we made the trip into John Lewis' food halls in London to get the requisite tins of Libby's. The final dish ... which I'm kicking myself I didn't photograph ... was a deep, individual pumpkin tart baked in a mini brioche mould, topped with a scoop of home-made pumpkin ice cream, accompanied by a wedge of chocolate pecan pie. There were few remnants to scrap off plates.

And thus the first Thanksgiving in my marital home passes to memory. What have I to be thankful for since last year? Friends and family, as ever. For a husband who, even though I didn't meet him to my mid 40s, was worth the wait. For a wonderful wedding that went to plan and a honeymoon that was the trip of a lifetime. For a secure job in a frightening economy. For my mother slipping away easily and painlessly with friends around her. For the remarkable medical imaging equipment that found my cancer and, once again, is allowing early treatment that will prevent its spread. Perhaps most important, that last one. Because I have a lot more Thanksgivings stretching ahead to plan.