23 November 2012

One Day. Thanksgiving




As an Aussie, to me, Thanksgiving has always conjured up images of giant turkeys, large family gatherings and hollowed-out pumpkins (yes, I’m a little confused with Halloween there, never-the-less there is pumpkin pie!). So, after 22 years of our Aussie-equivalent: rowdy Australia Day, I was ecstatic when I realised I would be in the USA for their iconic family holiday.

It’s only 8pm and I’m exhausted, but it’s been a wonderfully festive day. It started out with a morning full of cooking whilst watching the TODAY show’s parade; we made corn muffins (interesting savoury cake), stuffing (for the turkey of course), and pumpkin pie (I was a little hesitant about trying this one but I can actually say it was pretty delicious, it somewhat reminded me of carrot cake). The cooking was followed by the traditional Thanksgiving Day Dog Show, a full 3 hours of television dedicated to primped and preened pooches strutting their stuff – apparently it’s one the highest rating programs of the year. Then it was time to head to the neighbourhood’s Thanksgiving lunch/afternoon/dinner – it seems, on this holiday, regular meal times are not an influencing factor but it turns out I’m actually glad we had ‘dinner’ at 4pm because even now, 4 hours later, I’m still stuffed!

I felt like a total tourist when I first laid eyes on the turkey – here was I envisaging a bird slightly larger than a regular roast chicken. But oh no. This beast weighed 9kgs so it’s safe to say there was plenty to go around for the 15 of us at lunch.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and want to say a big thank you to those I shared the celebration with. It has been a wonderful first Thanksgiving for me and I hope to share many more in the future.

Off to New York tomorrow, more posts then.