Trial and Error
About a week ago, John and I decided hat we should try to make our own Thanksgiving dinner. Our families are far away, but we still wanted to feel a bit of home by attempting to make all the classic Thanksgiving dishes. First things first, I had to make a schedule for the days cooking. I knew if I hadn't that we would most likely eat potatoes for an appetizer (entree) and rolls for dessert.All Day Cooking
11:00 take turkey out of fridge and pat dry
11:15 put turkey in fridge without cover
1:15 step 1 and 2 of bread rolls recipe
1:40 let dough sit and rise
3:00 do step three of bread rolls recipe
3:15 take turkey out of fridge
3:20 let bread rolls rise
4:00 cut up bread and cook ‘crumbs in oven
4:10 make stuffing on stove – then refrigerate
4:15 put ingredients in turkey
5:00 put turkey in oven
4:40 cut up potatoes
5:30 lower oven temp to 176
5:15 put potatoes in oven
6:15 uncover potatoes and continue baking
6:30-6:45 take turkey out of oven
6:40 take potatoes out of oven
6:40 put green bean casserole in oven
6:50 put rolls in oven to heat up
7:10 everything should come out of the oven now if it hasn’t
already
John had to work on Thursday. He wanted to come home and help though, so I emailed him this timeline. His response was Holy Cow!!!! The preparations actually began a few days in advance. To our Aussie friends, I assure you this is quite normal.... I made a total of 7 trips to the grocery store in 4 days. The thrift store (opp shop) was good to me this week with some fantastic serving dishes. So enough writing... Here is the photo log from the two days.
Grocery Shopping
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| In Australia, both pumpkins and squash are known as pumpkins. So it was very hard to find a pumpkin for pumpkin pie. |
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| In Australia, both pumpkins and squash are known as pumpkins. So it was very hard to find a pumpkin for pumpkin pie. |
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| It took me several days to find a turkey! |
Cooking
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| I've never made a pumpkin pie before. |
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| Be the pumpkin! |
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| Here goes nothing. |
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| Also another first, I bought vanilla beans. It was sort of fun to figure out how to use them. |
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| I don't believe people when their cooking photos are all clean. This is my kitchen when I cook. |
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| And the turkey!! It worked. |
Relaxing
Dinner was in the oven and we needed some air-conditioning. Now I know why Aussies actually don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Forget the fact that it has nothing to do with their heritage. It's because November is freaking hot! 32 degrees C (~90 degrees F) with the oven on all day, it was brutal. So we gave in and turned the air-conditioning on for a little while
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| My Thanksgiving memories all include A Christmas Story playing in the background on TV. So it had to be included. P.S. Our roommate has never heard of it! Before Christmas, I will get him to watch it. You can't understand America without it! |
Dinner
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| Our Aussie roommate Michael joined us for the evening. Trevor, his dog, tried his hardest to join us as well. |
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| The food, all homemade from top to bottom: Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Bread Rolls, Stuffing (still covered) Turkey, Scalloped Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole. |
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| This is how the kitchen looked afterwards.... So many leftovers and so messy! |
Dessert
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| Pumpkin Pie |
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| Apple Pie. The crust completely sunk into the pie. It looked horrible, but tasted amazing. |
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| Too bad I can't say the same for the pumpkin pie. None of us could manage to take more than one bite. I decided to have a little fun with it. |
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
