Smallest Turkey Ever

Obviously there's no Thanksgiving celebrations here but that didn't stop us from enjoying the benefits of it. You know, the hours of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, the gorging of the food, then of the dessert. Oh yes, and somewhere in there we consider what we're thankful for. This year one of Anthony's co-worker, Eric, hosted the Thanksgiving celebration the following Saturday and it was a good turnout. I think about 20 or so people showed up, Americans and Australians. They even had the UT and Texas Tech game recorded so that was playing. I don't think there was a single Australian watching it.

The food was awesome. Fortunately they had a decent sized oven, unlike our wannabe one. I heard Eric took the dimensions of the oven and went to the store and asked for a turkey that will fit in said dimensions. Some of the traditional dishes has to be modified since you can't find some of the ingredients, such as the onion rings that go in the green bean casserole! I was heart broken at that when I went to the store a few days before to look for it. Another was the Cool Whip for the pumpkin pies. Sad, just so sad I know.

So why was I at the store trying to buy ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner? Well, we opted for a second one just for ourselves. I HAD planned on cooking it on actual Thanksgiving day but the bird was still frozen. Apparently they don't carry non-frozen birds until the week prior to Christmas. The lady at the meat counter gave me a weird look when I asked if they had non-frozen turkeys. So my only choice was to buy a frozen one. I was wondering if the turkey was going to be too big for the oven but nope! Not a 3.2 kg (7 lb)  turkey! That's a small bird!! I think back in the states I could never find one smaller than 13 lbs or so. Oh well, at least that means we didn't have weeks of leftover, just a few days. I whipped up some mashed potatoes, green bean casserole based on a recipe I found that didn't use the ready made onion rings, and some gravy. I forgot the stuffing!! They didn't have the easy made kind here so it completely slipped my mind. I'll have to look up a recipe to try it for Christmas dinner.

And that was it, our first Thanksgiving in Australia. Even the kids got a sliver or two of turkey, bet they were thankful for that!

- julie