Rebas' Adventure in Ozzieland

Thanksgiving in October you say? That right, if you take a careful look at your calendars you will see that last weekend was Thanksgiving Day in Canada. My friend Melanie (moon pie) and I wanted to throw a thanksgiving feast for our bible study. And as Mel is Canadian and the end of November is a little too hot around here to facilitate a winter feast, we decided to celebrate on Canada’s day. Not counting shopping, we cooked for 6 hours on Friday night. The most fun was when we couldn’t find Turkey, cranberries or puréed pumpkin. How do you have thanksgiving without those three things?!? We compromised on chicken and on Saturday I learned that while fresh or frozen cranberries are not to be had; cranberry sauce is in the relish aisle. (a slight cultural miscommunication, we asked ask least 3 store attendants for cranberries, no one assumed we wanted it for sauce, go figure). Now around here when you say Pumpkin everyone thinks Squash. Butternut, acorn, etc, is all called pumpkin and is always served savoury. (Squash refers to zucchini), and when you say pie everyone thinks of small meat pies; so when you say pumpkin pie you get a lot of weird looks. I had never made a pumpkin pie from whole pumpkin, but lucky for me, my Aunt Kathy has, a quick email and I had the recipe for scratch pumpkin pie. No one at the dinner had ever had it before, it was a huge it, at least four people were begging for the recipe, unfortunately, we used sweeten condensed milk instead of evaporated milk and so we had to modify the recipe was we went, I am still trying to recreate it on paper ._________________It was a great day. We were 15 in all for dinner. I will now go through and give you names to go with each pic started at the top: 1) Mel and me, the cooks!___2)The pies, best pumpkin I have ever had.___3)Emma brought a ham and glazed it___4) Rachel stirring the gravy, we had at least half a gallon of gravy___5) Mel and me served up___6) Reba craving___7) someone’s hands, Tim L, Rebecca, Sarah, someone’s head, David eating, eating , eating¬___ 8) Joanna and her grandpa___ 9) Jono pouring me a drink of Kola Cola, sort of like cream soda but more Australian___ 10) Emma, Jono, Sarah, Becky all taking a walk after dinner with Reba to make room for pie___ 11)Sarah, Reba and Becky being silly on walk because we can___ 12) folks we left behind finished the dishes and started playing cards___13) Emma and Leoni eating pie___ 14) Lorraine and Sarah eating pie_____________The whole day was great, the walk, the card game, just like a real thanksgiving. I gave a short talk on what the holiday was all about and we went around and said what we were thankful for. Everyone said a different version of being thankful for friends and church family. And then to wrap the whole night up, I got a laugh attach as I was leaving. First appearance of the exotic bird laugh in Australia! Woot! It really felt (and tasted) like thanksgiving I had a great time.