When Thanksgiving rolled around, everyone in our house was anxious to make sure it would celebrated. Since no one else in the program at AGSM was from the US, it was really up to us to throw the feast. We invited over anyone who wanted to come from their program, and we ended up with a fantastic mix of nationalities. We had Canadians, Brits, Indians, Germans, you name it. (Not hard really, since the mix of nationalities in the AGSM program was so varied to begin with.) What resulted was really one of my favorite days out of our whole stay in Oz.
All of the roomies pitched in with the cooking – and it turns out that we're all pretty damn good cooks, because it was a delicious feast. Kate and Ryan took care of the mashed potatoes, a truly fantastic stuffing, and an apple pie. Day – less confident in skills as a chef – pulled together the appetizers and beautiful cranberry, blue cheese, and walnut salad. Greg made maybe the best gravy ever. I don't even like gravy that much, but this was awesome. Alexandra, who is French and was not a roomie, but was heavily invested in the Thanksgiving celebration since she had spent many years in the US, contributed a copious amount of the requisite pumpkin pies. The amount of pies was really kind of insane, but they were delicious. Our other guests all made contributions of some kind, mostly of the alcoholic nature.
I made candied yams, and since I had the most time, I took on the turkey. I'd never made a Thanksgiving Turkey before, so I must admit I was both a little nervous and a little excited. I got my mom's recipe a few days earlier and began prepping the bird the day before. When I finally pulled the bird from the oven, I was even more nervous, since the skin was extremely brown. Dear Lord! Had I burned it???
Despite the color, it was delicious. I had rubbed the skin with copious, copious amounts of garlic butter . . . and then rubbed it with more . . . which caused the skin to cook more rapidly and crisp up, and it was actually quite tasty. The meat was moist and delicious. YAY!!! That bird got picked clean. There were NO leftovers . . . which actually made me a little sad. I love the sandwiches you make from leftovers. Also – as with anyone raised in an “ethnic” household – it's been engrained in me that feeding people means aim to have food for AT VERY LEAST twice as many guests as you have. If at all possible, a food to guest ratio of 3 or 4 to 1 is preferable. In my mom's case, the goal is always to have enough food to feed a small platoon, no matter how many guests you actually expect. In this, I clearly failed where the turkey was concerned, although there was plenty of food otherwise. However, the feasters seemed pretty . . . er . . happy.
After feeding, the group split pretty traditionally along gender lines. The women went outside to chat a while, and the men congregated around the TV. Seeing as how there was no American football game on for the boys to watch, they needed something to yell at, and somehow Armageddon became the substitute. Rowdy yelling was to be expected, however, I must admit that I was a bit shocked when they broke into song at the end of the movie . . . go figure.
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