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Published: December 4th 2007
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Thanksgiving Day Feast
Aussies Keenan & Alissa, Jordan (JoJo) Smith, Mark, Sarah, Grace, Steve & Jane Fisher, And Ben Thanksgiving NZ Nov 22, 2007
Well rested from our trip to the Coromandel, we were all business now with a Thanksgiving spread to plan and prepare. We gave up on catching a wild turkey. It wouldn't really be sporting anyway since you can call them up like puppies. We settled with chicken since the turkeys to be had at New World were frozen and cost prohibitive. Our menu consisted of chicken and dressing (Thank you, Aunt Jamima) and all the trimmings (potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce), with a little kiwi flavor thrown in (grilled asparagus, tossed salad with avocado). The finishing touches were pumpkin pie (Thank you, Libbys, Libbys, Libbys) and pecan pie made with Glucose (they don't have Karo syrup here). We invited our friends from Australia, Alissa and Keenan, over for their very first Thanksgiving celebration. I think they were as impressed with the canned pumpkin as they were with the jellied cranberries. Pumpkin in New Zealand is considered a vegetable. It is never served sweetened. That would be akin to us serving lettuce cookies. The only glitch in the whole evening came when I was trying to multitask and handle two salads at once. The fruit salad
lost out and ended up on the kitchen floor. Not being one to waste food, (she works for the Department of Conservation, after all) Alissa scooped the fruit back in the bowl and proceeded to place it on table, "It's not like you have cats or anything". Anyway, dinner was wonderful and we tried our best to stuff ourselves as much as possible but ended up with just a little bit of chicken and dressing and potatoes left over. Since Keenan seemed to like it so much, I packed the leftovers up and sent it home with them. They were going camping on the weekend and could use the extra food. Keenan told me later that when they started to eat it, it didn't look like enough for both he and Alissa, so he did what any good mate would do. He added a couple of avocados and a hunk of cheese to it, mixed it all up and heated it up over the fire. I asked him how it tasted. "Tasty". I told him I could not wait to share his tip for stretching out Thanksgiving leftovers!
(Mark - Not much else to say about Thanksgiving, except to
Be Prepared!
Always carry rain gear in NZ. Luckily we did not get to test out our new ponchos. ditto that it was great. It was nice having family and friends to share it with. Of course it is not a recognized holiday in NZ, so I worked that day. I had to remind two expatriate Americans what day it was. On the weekend, us boys went for a short overnight tramp in the Kaimais. Meticulous preparation went in to planning the menus for the next two days. Unfortunately we left most of it at home. We reprovisioned at Woolworths - a grocery store on the way. Soon we started out on Dalys Clearing Loop Track and stayed in a DOC hut. The walk on day one was in the bush, but not too strenuous. We shared the facilities at the hut with a group of women taking a tramping course. They mostly kept to themselves and slept in tents. Good judgment was on them as they missed out on snore fest in the hut. The following day we detoured on the Waitawheta tramway walk and on to the Kauri Grove loop. I enjoy the tramway walk as it mostly follows the river. It was a good time. We finished early enough to have lunch with the girls and
then hit the beach.)
One of our favorite things to do here is cook out at the beach. The city has bbq grills set up with a large metal plate in the center. It is free and first come first serve. All you have to do is hit the electric start button on the side every eight minutes to keep it going. We have really enjoyed spending the evenings at the beach and watching and smelling all the different foods that people cook there. Last week we were cooking some bbq chicken and veggies and there was a group of Spanish speaking guys next to us. Their food smelled sooooo good and we were hungery (again) for our mexican fix. Maybe if we hang out by the grills enough, we will get invited to partake.
Our family visit ended the next week with the family leaving out of Auckland Tuesday night. We took the long way around through the farm country and throughbred horse farms to show a different side of New Zealand. As Steve said, "Everywhere you look is beautiful".
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