Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not a New Zealand holiday, but it's one of my favorites so I decided it would be a New Zealand holiday this year. So I picked a date, invited some friends, and made a menu. When I asked one of my friends if he'd like to come, he looked at me like I'd just asked a silly question and said "of course I'll be there, there'll be lots of food there. America's got it right, having a holiday about eating. NZ should adopt that."

The menu was slightly non-traditional in that we didn't have turkey. We had planned to but when I went to the supermarket and saw that a 10lb turkey would be $70, I thought I'd look for a cheaper option since there were 15-20 people planning to come. Next I thought I'd buy a ham, but it turns out ham was even more over-priced than turkey. So we had yummy oven roasted chicken! In other respects I'd say it was a pretty normal Thanksgiving menu. Everyone said the dinner rolls I made tasted like traditional Maori bread, which was cool :)  I made a pumpkin pie and a butterscotch pie. Pumpkin is used as a vegetable here, and pumpkin pie is a foreign idea so this was the first time my kiwi friends had tried it. The general opinion was that it's quite yummy :) For a traditional NZ dessert, we had pavlova. Not sure how to best describe it...it's sweet deliciousness. I'll use a picture and recommend that you try it if you get the chance. Deviled eggs is another menu item my kiwi friends hadn't tried, but the recipe has been requested several times :)

Despite a bit of rain in the early afternoon, our randomly selected Thanksgiving day was quite nice. It was warmer than I'm accustomed to but it was nice to not have on too many layers. The evening was like any proper feast should be, lots of food and laughter with friends/family.

About half the food

Dessert, before the cheesecake and pavlova arrived

pavlova