Thanksgiving!

November found many of us missing our families, American football (if you’re into that type of thing), and traditional American Thanksgiving dinners with our Mom’s homemade pie, cheesecake, green bean casserole, turduckin or what-have-you. Add to that the fact that we were planning to be on our West Coast field trip on Thanksgiving and holiday spirit seemed to have no chance...

Until it was announced that we would in fact be having Thanksgiving after all, a week early, minus football and Moms. Instead everyone made their favorite Thanksgiving dish and we invited some of our Kiwi friends over. For some of them it was their first Thanksgiving EVER.

Some things that Kiwis may have thought were interesting or crazy:

1. The amount of food.
2. Mixing of sweet and savory dishes (this is not common here).
3. The “Turduckin.” The local butcher was thrilled to help Curtis and Tyler figure this one out. Finding out how to debone a turkey, duck and chicken online proved to be a nearly impossible task.
4. Americans dress up for Thanksgiving dinner.
5. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin here is not something that one makes pie out of.

It turned out to be quite the evening, and resulted in several family recipes being exchanged, except for Stephen’s sister’s cheesecake recipe which he dutifully incinerated as she requested after making the cake.