Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of those quintessential American holidays that simply must be celebrated regardless of where you are. So, despite the impediments to a proper Thanksgiving I set out to celebrate beginning in August - the dead of winter. Some of the impediments included:

• No day off on Thursday Nov 22nd. It's not a holiday here so everyone goes to work. 
• Solution: Have the turkey on the following Saturday.
• This irked me but didn't stop me.
• November is Spring, not Fall. 
• Solution: None
• Secondary problems:
• Seasonal Fall delicacies are not readily available
• Solution: Pay top dollar for out of season pumpkins (which are freakishly green and not orange!)
• Turkey is not a popular food - to the point that our Kiwi babysitter had NEVER eaten turkey. Ever. Seriously.
• Solution: wait until the last minute (when turkeys were stocked in the groceries for Christmas) and pay nearly NZ$100 for a 12 lb turkey and a 6 lb turkey "roast" (boneless turkey). 
• I think Erik figured that it was like US$6 per lb for a turkey!
• Thanks to Sue, Erik's mom, for gifting us the turkeys!! 
• Americans eat some unique dishes at Thanksgiving that are simply not available in NZ stores. (eg.,Libby's Solid Pack Pumpkin, canned cranberry sauce, Durkee fried onions, Pepperidge Farm Stuffing mix)
• Solutions: 
• make cranberry sauce from scratch (no canned sauce here!) 
• I know, we do that in the States but I really LIKE the canned stuff.
• buy pumpkin, cut it up and scrape seeds out, cook pumpkin in oven, cool and peel pumpkin, mash pumpkin, strain extra liquid out of pumpkin, measure 15 oz and cook pumpkin pies! 



Strange NZ pumpkin. This is as big as they get - about the size of a cantaloupe.



This was the dress rehearsal pie. I didn't get a pic of the actual ones but their crusts looked better.

• This technique took multiple tries before I got it right but it was perfect in the end!
• Also, we should all be much more thankful for canned pumpkin than we usually are. Those poor Puritan women really went to some trouble with the damn pumpkin pies. And, what they did without Carnation evaporated milk, I'll never know. Without that, I would have thrown in the towel and gone for pecan pies instead!
• Sadly, no viable solution was found for the dearth of Durkee fried onions so the only solution was to forego the green bean casserole. (I know, right!?)
• Paula Dean has a great recipe for corn bread stuffing from scratch (as in: I had to make the cornbread and dry it out myself). But anything Paula does has got to be better than anything Pepperidge farm does - and it was, but don't ask how much butter was in it! 
• Side note on the stuffing. Fully a week after T-giving I saw stores starting to stock stuffing mixes for Christmas dinner. AARRGGH! Oh well, mine was better. :) 
• I have an oven a bit larger than the size of the puny turkey I bought. So, how to make dinner for 25 people? 
• Solutions: 
• Have a potluck and ask people to bring side dishes. 
• This worked out beautifully and made the cooking so much easier for me and it was fun to try other people's dishes. 



Thank goodness they have turkey bags here.

• Put the turkey in the oven, put the turkey roast in my crock pot (yep, it was that small), cook the stuffing while the turkey rested. 
• What to do about football? You have to have football on Thanksgiving. 
• Erik, being the awesome guy he is, managed to download the Redskins/Cowboys game for us. It wound up being mostly background but still was necessary for the atmosphere to be right. :) 

We invited some American friends and some friends from the UK, NZ, and Mauritius. We had 12 adults and 12 kids. Our babysitter came too so she could keep the kids occupied with Thanksgiving crafts (paper bag turkeys and Indian corn on a stick). She did a pretty good job and the adults managed to visit without our kids crawling all over us! :) 

The table was set and Sue sent us some Thanksgiving napkins and a table cloth that helped with the Thanksgiving feel.

Flowers from the garden looking nearly as pretty as Lindsay!

Erik and Jeremiah. Excuse Erik's Movember Mostash!

Lindsay, Emma, and I.

Molly (left) and Milo catching some football. Emma (right), our sitter, helped out a lot with the kids.

Beautiful Spring day with the guys outside. (L to R: Gareth, Tim, Graeme, and Ian)

Niva's son, Benjamin, checking out the playroom.

Amelia having some fun in the playroom too.

The older boys retreated to Ben's room and we didn't hear from them for hours! (L to R: Kai, Joe, and Ben)

Catherine took most of these photos. She got a nice one of herself too. She's become quite the little photog!

Maggie's little boyfriend, Milo, and his mom Molly. 

Doesn't Catherine take great pics?! lol!

Emma is always such a good sport. 

William, Emma's son, is also a popular guy with Maggie.

Our microscopic back yard. But there are three sets of sliding glass doors to let in the light - so that's nice.

Ian, Gareth, and Jeremiah enjoying dinner outdoors. (See Mom, I used your table cloth too!)

A thankful bunch. (Clockwise: Lovely Me, Molly, Tim, Emma, Graeme, Lindsay, Yuri, and Niva.

It was really fun to have Thanksgiving at our house and have our new friends (and two old friends) to celebrate with. It made the day feel "right" and so many days here have not felt quite right. New Zealand is a fun place to live but sometimes it's just exhausting to live in a place where everything is a bit different and unfamiliar. It was easy to feel thankful for the good things in our lives with good friends and great food (and football).