Thanksgiving Preparations

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere but not a pumpkin to be found. (read on if you're confused)

I'm cooking Thanksgiving dinner. For seven people. Have I gone mad? It's entirely possible. Preparing Thanksgiving dinner is one of those events that seems to have gained mythic proportions. It's supposed to be an ordeal even for the already initiated. It's not like I've never helped with things before, but I'm flying solo over here. How hard can it be to stuff a chicken and bake pies? Great, I've cursed myself now. On the menu, if all goes well: chicken with stuffing (I know it's supposed to be a turkey, but frankly turkeys are huge and chicken tastes better), garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, some sort of veggie? (we'll see what's at Paddy's), apple pie, and pumpkin pie.

The difficulties have already begun, but I'm pretty sure most of them are not of the traditional kind. First there's the question of whether or not the giblets have been removed from the chicken. I have no desire to stick my hand up a chicken's arse and pull out its insides. I could find nothing on the packaging to indicate things one way or another, so it will be a surprise (*crosses fingers that it's a pleasant one*) when I open the package. Ok, I'm sure people have dealt with that one before. Of course, once the chicken is prepared, I have to cook it. I don't normally cook whole chickens. My mom was kind enough to email me some guidelines after I whimpered over the phone for a while (thank you Mommy!). Guidelines in pounds and Farenheit. I took a look at them and my first reaction was "my oven only goes up to 250 degrees. What am I supposed to do, burn the house down???" Now, is it multiply or divide by 5/9? And it's a good thing my mobile has a unit converter, or I'd have had no idea which chickens to buy. Canadians really need to decide whether they're imperial or metric.

Next is the issue of cranberry sauce. Do you think I could find a single cranberry anywhere? Fresh, frozen, canned, dried, they do not seem to exist. I wonder if they appear around Christmas? I did eventually manage to find microscopic jars of cranberry sauce at a ridiculously high price (Ocean Spray, genuine American cranberries) and was forced to settle. I needed to save time - and my sanity. I did find out that Coles stocks packages of frozen berries, which lifted my spirits until I remembered that I lack a blender to make smoothies.

Pie crusts. A seemingly simple quest. There's a huge section of frozen pastries. No problem right? Puff pastry... puff pastry... puff pastry... flan base? That looked promising until I realised it was about a fingerwidth deep. I did find pie crusts already in foil pie plates, which was rather perfect except that I need a top for the apple pie. Much staring at the freezer finally led me to a package of 3 sheets of shortcrust pastry, "suitable for pies". I thought that was quite straightforward of them and bought it. I think I can manage making them round. Ching will pick up some pie plates (yeah, my cupboard contains everything but) on Monday before I get home.

Ok. Pumpkin pie. I was originally going to stick with an apple pie, but it simply wouldn't be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie as well. (note: my Thanksgiving always includes an apple pie, or something similar, because I feel sick after more than one bite of pumpkin pie) And I just couldn't stop thinking about pumpkin pies. My mouth is watering just writing this. I am willing to go to any lengths for just one mouthful. Plus, the idea of making a sweet dessert pie using a pumpkin is an entirely novel idea to absolutely everyone but my fellow North Americans. So I have to prove that this is a good idea. I just hope the recipe I picked at Cooks.com is a good one. It's simple enough. Especially if you use canned pumpkin.

So what's the problem you ask? There are no pumpkins in Australia. No, that's not quite true. There are millions of pumpkins in Australia because they refer to all squash as pumpkins. But not a single one of those squash is ACTUALLY a pumpkin. The round, orange kind of Jack o'Lantern fame, I mean. I found a website that assured me that various types of squash, butternut among them, are good pumpkin substitutes when making pies. Alright, I thought, I'll just get a can of squash and see what happens. They do make squash soup here, people must buy canned squash. Right?

Wrong. No canned squash. I actually got a funny look when I asked. They told me there was squash soup in a can, but no squash. They can everything else, why the heck not a squash? I found bamboo shoots in a can. But no squash. I considered sticking with the apple pie as per original plans. But by this time, the determination - no, the intense NEED - to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving was running the show. There were plenty of fresh butternut squash. And they peel really easily. So if I can find somebody to let me use their blender (Vikki, do you hear this?), we're all set. Either that or Ching is going to have a very sore arm after mashing all the potatoes and then attempting to puree the sqash by hand.

I'm now trusting that my thanksgiving Canadian spirit will somehow be enough to pull this off.