One of Jonathan’s favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. I like the reasoning behind the holiday, but the food has never really been my motivator for Thanksgiving anticipation.
Only recently have I actually enjoyed eating the traditional Thanksgiving meal. But, since it is one of Jonathan’s absolute favorite dinners, and a very American tradition, I had to do something.
And of course, we have plenty to be thankful for this year.
So, we decided that if we couldn’t celebrate with our proper family, we would celebrate with our Auckland family. We invited a group of friends over for a “traditional” Thanksgiving feast.
There were two major challenges with this plan.
One. Our apartment does not have an oven. No oven, and only a 2 burner stove-top, and a hotel-sized mini fridge.
Two. It is nearly impossible to come by turkeys in New Zealand.
Challenge number two, actually made challenge number one a little easier. (I don’t have to worry about how to roast a turkey, when there are no turkeys to speak of.)
My mission this year was to cook a proper Thanksgiving feast, but without an oven. Or a turkey, or pumpkin from a can.
The pumpkin challenge was easy. I just chopped, boiled, pealed, and mashed (by hand, with a fork) a pumpkin.
Unfortunately, this year it wasn’t for pumpkin pie. (No oven.) But, it was for pumpkin mousse.
We had quite a delicious feast if I do say so myself (and obviously I do).
There was:
Pan “roasted” chicken
Chestnut, leek, and apple stuffing
Orange scented green beans
Vanilla whipped sweet potatoes
Spiced pumpkin mousse
And our friends Dale and James showed off their mad pie skills and brought 3 pies. Because, after all, what would Thanksgiving be without pie?
I’ll post the recipes and how the whole process went in future posts, but for now, Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! And thank you to James, Dale, Lucia, Ivan, Anu, and Anu’s husband for coming!
I loved this and I love your improvising!! You are an amazing, creative person and I love you very much!! Maybe next year we can try a little bit of that spiced pumpkin mousse! Oh yeah — one more thing you forgot on the menu but included in the feast — BEER!! Yay!
Thank you. I’m supposed to cook for my new vegan girlfriend next week and have no idea what to make! I found a ton of recipes at this vegetarian recipes site but with so mnay to choose from I just got confused. Do you have any favorites youself, like .. the tastiest vegetarian recipe, ever, or something?! Thanks in advance! I hope it goes well