In Which the Blog Title Does Not Fit in the Blog Title Box (See Below)

In Which She-Who-Climbs-Trees (Kat) and She-Who-Swings-High (Destiny) Cook Thanksgiving Dinner for Constant-Is-The-Lord's-Love Huxtable (Clare) and Mourn the Absence of He-Who-Lights-The-Bears-On-Fire (the cat)

Many moons ago, somewhere off of Interstate 75 (probably), a group of happy, English-speaking Native Americans in brightly colored feather headdresses sat down with several austere pilgrims who did not believe in color. Together, they had a meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pink cloud. Being Protestant evangelicals, they gave thanks to God for all He had given them. Now, almost 400 years later, the exact same thing happened.


Only completely different.

We awoke at the unrighteous hour of 9 o'clock this morning to being preparing the many traditional Thanksgiving foods we wished to share with our Kiwi hosts, none of whom had experienced Thanksgiving before. After carefully strategizing, we began cooking and learned several very important things:
1) Always asks specifically where the mixing bowls are, because Kiwis do obnoxious things like store them under the sink.
2) French fried onions are actually a very important part of green bean casserole. Without them, it's more like green-bean-cream-of-mushroom soup. Kiwis don't believe in French fried onions. If you ask about them, they will accuse you of making them up.
3) Hand-whipping meringue takes a freakishly long time. Multiple shift changes are necessary.
Despite these difficult lessons, we managed to cook mashed potatoes with cheese, kumara (sweet potato) souffle, green bean casserole, dressing, pink cloud (fluffy pink cottage cheese/cream/pineapple/strawberry jello mixture), yeast rolls (turned out to be more of a yeast loaf but still pretty tasty), and chocolate pie, as well as a turkey.

Once the cooking was complete, we spent most of the afternoon engaged in the most important of Thanksgiving festivities: the making of handprint turkeys, Indian headdresses, and pilgrim hats. Note--Indian headdress require a great deal less work than pilgrim hats, unless you're like Kat and make yourself a full chief's headdress. That takes a very long time.

Hats on and turkeys tacked to the wall by the table (along with several colorful Kiwi birds to keep them company), we presented our hosts with our Thanksgiving feast, which they very kindly ate, with the exception of Moira, who refused to eat the pink cloud.

During the meal, we each told a few things for which we are thankful, the most interesting of which being unicorns.

Thus passed our traditional American Thanksgiving in New Zealand. We hope your Turkey Day is equally enjoyable. Tell the Macy's parade we said hello.

P.S.--He-Who-Lights-The-Bears-On-Fire has returned. There was much rejoicing.