An Ozzie Thanksgiving!!

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Trip Start Oct 04, 2005 Previous
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  Brisbane, Australia
Thursday, November 24, 2005

There are three major holidays that it's sad to be away from your family - your birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - and since I am going to be away for an entire year, I'm going to have to face each one. Thanksgiving was the first one up. Not only was it going to be my first Thanksgiving away from home and in a country that doesn't celebrate it, but it would be the first time that I would be in charge of the food. Together with two of my American friends, Hilary and Christina, we planned the menu and who would get what and agreed to arrive at my house around 11ish in order to have everything ready by 4. That was the plan. But as I've learned time and again, plans never really work out the way you expected them to. First of all, I didn't even make it to the grocery store until 10:30 the day of. But, I figured, that'd be ok. If we timed it right, everything would be done by 4. So with Toby, one of my new roommates, in tow, we went through the store converting kgs to lbs, finding the equivalent ozzie ingredients to the ones I had written down from my grandma's receipes, and figuring out what to do for turkey in a country that doesn't really eat turkey. Finally, after scouring the shelves for things like soy margerine (Hilary's a vegan) and vegetable stock, we headed back to the house ready to cook up a storm. So there I was, the head chef, making everything from scratch and most of it vegan, giving orders to Toby whose job it became to make the salad and dressing, and having a fabulous time! The word of the day became flare; every receipe was changed just a little bit either because we had to make it vegan, we didn't have the ingredient, or just because we felt like it.

An multinational Thanksgiving

Hilary and Christina finally made it over by around 2, and then my other roommate, Ross, came home and immediately joined the Thanksgiving frenzy as well. Getting into the spirit of it all, he and Toby decorated the livingroom/diningroom with hanging cds and empty beer cans, set a nice table using bedsheets, paper Christmas napkins, and plastic wine glasses. They even printed out the story of Thanksgiving and made photo name cards to put at our place settings. Everything was going beautifully and even though I knew we wouldn't make it by 4, I figured it'd be all ready by 5 if we cooked my super duper deep dish apple pie (totally from scratch!) during dinner. So timing everything perfectly, I put in our turkey roast allowing an hour for cooking as the box said...unfortunately I didn't see the bit about defrosting it for 36 hours prior to cooking. But have no fear, this was a Thanksgiving full of flair! I made an executive decision that while we waited for microwave and stove to do their magic with the turkey, we would begin the rest of our meal. So there we were, an Ozzie, a South African, and three Americans chowing down on candied yams, two types of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and dressing in a house by the train tracks in the 90 degree heat of Australia. The turkey eventually was ready...and got rave reviews thanks to my ingenious (and flair-filled) quick-cooking methods. After dinner we retired to the porch, lounging on the hammock, couches, and mattress while finishing off the wine and digesting enough to make room for the pie. And as we were sitting there, all of us totally and completely satisfied, congratulating ourselves on a job well-done, it suddenly hit me that this was not only one of the best days I've had since I started travelling, but possibly also the best Thanksgiving I've ever had! So there you go, one "sad day" down...and I couldn't stop smiling!

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My deepdish mega apple pie from scratch!	Our beautiful table and a feast in the making	Our fabulous, one of a kind decorations	The Thanksgiving Story
Toby, Ross, and the cranberry sauce

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