A Thanksgiving Abroad

This post is from my sister, who just hosted her first Thanksgiving. In Australia.   

[Disclaimer: I wrote this on a computer with British English spell check, hence all of the non-American spellings of words…]

It’s not easy to host your first Thanksgiving feast – let alone doing it in a foreign country. Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays so I wanted to make sure that it was done right. And by “right” I mean exactly the way my family has done it growing up – my mom’s stuffing is just too good to be altered even in the slightest 🙂

So in the beginning of November, Operation Thanksgiving was a go. My first order of business was securing a whole turkey in a country where turkey is not the most popular of meats. Fortunately, my friend Lia knows someone who moonlights as a meat distributor or something (it sounds slightly shady, but I swear it was semi-legit) and was able to get me my 7kg bird – that’s 15lbs. for you Americans 😉

The next order of business was trying to find all of the fruit and veg out of season. Potatoes are no problem – but all the fall/winter veggies that we like to roast up were not that easily located in Spring. And you know what’s impossible to find? Cranberries. Seriously…not frozen, not fresh…nowhere. Bummer. Anyway, with the exception of the elusive cranberries, I found all the ingredients I needed to make veggies, mashed potatoes (both regular and sweet potatoes) and the stuffing.

The last item on the shopping list (and potentially one of the most important features of all) was canned OceanSpray cranberry jelly. Some people prefer a fancy homemade cranberry sauce, but not me and not my family. We like the ridges! If it’s not from a can, it’s just not acceptable for our Thanksgiving feast. So I set out for my most daunting task yet. Disheartened from the lack of cranberrage in the nation of Australia my hopes were not too high. I even visited the David Jones department store food hall (picture Harrods but on a much much much smaller scale) which has a small American-food section to no avail. (Although I must say that wasn’t a total failure as I DID find canned pumpkin for the pumpkin pie in that section). Anyway, back to my quest for cranberry jelly – it was at my third and final search when I finally found my beloved OceanSpray…but in a jar!! I’m willing to sacrifice the can ridges for the delicious taste of cranberry jelly. It really just unifies all of the other flavours on the plate, don’t you think?

With all of my shopping complete, all I had to do was focus on cooking it all. NBD, right? Well, the only problem with cooking a whole feast on Thanksgiving in Australia is that it’s not a National holiday…so I had to go to work. I prepared in advance as best I could cooking the desserts and doing a good portion of the chopping on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes needed to be done on Thursday. I was able to sneak out of the office at 3pm to race home to get the bird a’cookin.

I got home and immediately cooked the stuffing while I was prepping the turkey. Enter hiccup #1: As soon as I unwrapped the turkey I knew that something was different. This bird looked WEIRD…but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. FaceTime to the rescue! I called my parents back in the States to show them the turkey and make sure I wasn’t losing it and confirm that the turkey was, in fact, different than any American turkey I’d ever seen. After much deliberation and phone maneuvering so they could get a clear idea of what they were looking at, we determined that the wings had been cut off and it had unusually small looking legs. I did the best I could to work with it, stuff the turkey, seal with twine, coat with olive oil and herbs, stab it with the meat thermometer (also guided with my mom’s help via FaceTime), cover with foil, and get cooking in the oven at 475 degrees! (Later that evening when I was explaining the strange-bird scenario to my Aussie friends and there was talk that it may be some sort of bush turkey –http://www.micropest.com/bush-turkeys – I don’t know if it was or not, but either way it was delicious)

While the turkey was cooking in the oven I mashed up the potatoes, cooked the gravy, set the table, and ate copious amounts of stuffing J. Everyone started arriving right around time the turkey came out of the oven, we poured some delicious vino and then began our feast! I can’t believe how well everything turned out. The turkey was cooked to perfection – juicy and delicious – and all of the essential sides were there to make me feel like I was right at home.

I am certainly thankful to have so many friends in Australia who are willing to let me impose all of my American holidays on them! Next up: 4th of July!!

We missed you this year Laura.  But it looks like you did a pretty awesome job replicating our traditional Thanksgiving menu.  Oh, and happy (a day early) birthday!!!!