Thanksgiving 2010

Today marks the 1st Wednesday of December. That means that last Thursday was the 4th Thursday of the month, better known as Thanksgiving. I could bore you with the history of Thanksgiving, but I won't, and will concentrate on what we did for the day instead.

Psyche! I found something interesting out about Thanksgiving, as long as you trust Wikipedia, which I do. Apparently, Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia, but only on Norfolk Island (I know, who cares, right?!). From Wikipedia:

In the Australian external territory of Norfolk Island, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Wednesday of November, similar to the pre-World War II American observance on the last Thursday of the month. This means the Norfolk Island observance is the day before or six days after the United States' observance. The holiday was brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

I looked into it further, and it referenced the Attorney General's website, so it's actually legit.

Now, Americans, that doesn't give you free rein to start running around saying that Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia. To give a sense of scale:

• Norfolk Island is only 13.3 square miles (just over half the size of Manhattan). Australia, as a whole, is 2,941,299 square miles.
• Norfolk Island has an approximate population of 2141, compared to the nation's population of 22,540,116. That's .0095% of the population.

Back to the story of our Thanksgiving.

Because Thanksgiving dinner was being held at our place, preparation for us began on Wednesday night, when we cooked up some cranberry sauce and Liz produced some pumpkin pies. I say Liz produced the pies because as soon as the Ashes cricket started streaming I was out of the kitchen.

Cranberries in the saucepan...

...turned into cranberry sauce!

Thursday we woke up ready to cook. The turkey, which I took under my wing, took about 3 hours from start to finish. It was a 12 and a half pound masterpiece of meat and basting. After baking for an hour I started the basting process - every 15 minutes I would open the oven and put more liquid from the bottom of the pan over the turkey. It worked out awesomely well - the turkey wasn't dry at all.

The turkey, as it entered the oven

Basting - note the dollop of liquid under the baster

People - Richard, Barbara, Gail and Bruce (Gail's brother) - started arriving at around 2, so they got to witness the final preparation of sides and the carving.

Liz prepares to carve it up

The complete meal consisted of turkey, sweet potato and apple, gluten free stuffing, peas, mashed potatoes (from Gail), shallots, carrots and stuffing (from Barbara), parsnips (not pictured) and gravy. We also washed it down with sparkling (from Richard) and regular apple cider.

I've never been full on Thanksgiving, but I thought this could be the year. I started off with this:

After I ate that I loaded it up again. And then one more time for good measure.

After eating we needed a little time to digest, so we waited a while before having pumpkin pie and rice pudding for dessert. Some people had tea, and others had warmed apple cider.

Liz with a pumpkin pie

Mission accomplished: everyone fed and happy, and me, I was full for the first time ever on Thanksgiving.

Of course, there were leftovers. A lot of leftovers. Here was my dinner on Friday night:

Reheated and eaten from an oven safe dish. For convenience. We also had leftovers for breakfast and a full Thanksgiving dinner again on Saturday night. There are still some turkey scraps...