Jaime reminded me early in November that one night I invited a whole group of people from the hospital over for American Thanksgiving. It sounded like a great idea at the time! Everyone was so excited because being from everywhere else but America, they knew that Thanksgiving was all about eating good food all day but had never experienced it. So the party was on! We had a guest list of 10 (which of course ended up growing a little) and we planned our menu. My Mumster (which she has recently named herself after I started calling her "mum" like they do here) sent me all of her recipes and I began to make a list of ingredients. I was a little worried because I've always been Mumster's assistant for holiday cooking and never the mum. :) My first order of business...canned pumpkin, based on my food experiences here thus far...I just had this feeling this would be difficult to find and too late to have them shipped for home. Now, Aussies LOVE their pumpkin. They eat it in everything, they bake it, roast it, steam it, and put it in salads, sandwiches, and soup. But pumpkin pie??? They just don't do it.
I began my search with Google. A yanks down under forum gave me a few stores to try. I asked a girl at work and she had no idea what I was talking about until we got on the same page and I learned that the correct term was "Tinned pumpkin" and "No way would we sell tinned pumpkin!" This became a pretty rowdy subject and no matter who I mentioned the tinned pumpkin issue to, I always always got a hearty laugh...."Tinned pumpkin!?? No! hahahahahhahahaha." I often had to explain that in America, no one eats pumpkin like they do here. I had no idea how to even cook one. After my potential stores were unsuccessful, I began to google how to make a homemade pumpkin pie. I borrowed a hand-held blender, found myself a little sieve, and bought three pre-cut halves of butternut pumpkin to make my pumpkin puree. I put the baked pumpkin through the sieve several extra times to get all the water out so I didn't have a watery pie. Puree looked successful, but I sieved it so many times that it didn't look like much was left, but I put it away to save for the pie.
I couldn't find any frozen or pre-made pie crusts at the store, so we had a bakery make them for us (J's idea! Brilliant!). By a stroke of luck, Thursday (Thanksgiving Day at home) I was talking to a few girls at work about my pumpkin pie and this one girl said she lived right next to a USA Food store out in one of the suburbs and would gladly find me some "Tinned pumpkin." She brought it in the next day, just in time for some pie-making! phew!
So Jaime was the sous chef and I was acting mumster and we got to work. I made three pumpkin pies, 2 canned and one with my homemade pumpkin puree. My home-made one ended up being a little fussy, since I didn't have enough pumpkin, it was thin and cooked funny, so I kept that one for me. BUT, it tasted exactly like my canned pumpkin pies which came out spectacular! People said things like, of course you should make a pumpkin pie with fresh pumpkin, don't you want a fresh pie? Well, truth is, they taste exactly the same and that tinned pumpkin is SO worth it. :)
Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a little 6 pound turkey (which my family found comical when I showed it to them on skype...they also don't sell turkeys here except at Christmas and then they run about $80), a little turkey roast stuffed with cranberry and stuffing, green bean casserole, candied yams (which had limited marshmallows since the package only came with pink and white marshmallow mix, and the pink ones were strawberry flavored, lol), gravy, tomato salad, cheese ring, rolls, and mumster's make ahead mashed potatoes...
Now, you always want to make sure you have plenty of mashed potatoes. So I lugged home 7 pounds of potatoes (talk about super bag lady) and Jaime expertly peeled them. Throughout this whole cooking ordeal, I was constantly coming back to my computer to work out conversions from grams and ml to cups and ounces, C to F, etc. I was doing this so much that some things I just started to estimate. I just figured that the marks on the butter package were tablespoons, just like home, and I was getting "too good" and too busy for conversions. We mashed and mixed the potatoes and drizzled alot of butter on top while following the recipe. It did seem like alot of butter, but we figured it would sink in overnight. The next day, Jaime and I had to plan out our cooking strategy since the oven is the size of a toy box. The potatoes went in and when they came out, they were dripping with butter, like massive pools of butter. I called mumster right away to find out what to do and she calmly said, "Just pour it off." Right! So he tipped the pan while I held in the potatoes and we poured and scraped butter off the top several times. It looked much better. I did a quick mixing while they were hot so they could soak up a little more butter and within seconds...they turned yellow. So now we had a huge pan full of yellow mashed potatoes. When people arrived they crowded around looking at the food and kept asking if they were scrambled eggs. That's how yellow they were!! And I just replied, "Well...I had a little mishap with the metric system." It got a good laugh.
Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of one Australian and people from Holland, Portugal, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Malaysia. They all tried a little of everything, including the yellow potatoes, and most went back for seconds. Dessert was a hit with the pumpkin pies, a kentucky derby pie (which looked nothing like mum's, but luckily tasted just about the same and ended up going home with a very happy guest), and a beautiful strawberry sponge cake that someone made. It turned out to be a really nice day and we were so thankful to have such a wonderful group of friends to celebrate ours and their first Thanksgiving!
On Sunday, Jaime and I had movie day, and I literally could not move from the couch. I was exhausted! It was well worth it...but from here on out, holiday cooking will still be at Mumsters or pot-luck! :)
In my recovery stuper on Sunday, Jaime showed me the quick converter right on the desktop of his mac, which definitely would have made life easier. Then I would have known that:
1 tablespoon of butter weighs 14.19 grams and I wouldn't have used the 50 gram markings on the butter label as tablespoons.
oops! :)
Happy Thanksgiving!
I am thankful for all of you! (and that butter tastes so good!)
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