(Molly) Happy Thanksgiving! FOF, short for "Festival of Fowl," the brainchild of Katie Laurent/Hall, now in its 7th year, actually landed on Thanksgiving this year. Since I was actually off, and we couldn't travel home for Thanksgiving, we had FOF on the actual day this year. As per FOF tradition, we made a turkey, everyone else brought the sides. We had to order the turkey several weeks ahead of time and paid an arm and a leg for it out of season (Kiwis eat their turkey exclusively for Christmas). But it was worth it. Real Simple's butter/molasses/salt/pepper/lemon combo came through again, and I discovered you don't actually need a turkey baster to baste a turkey!
Then came time to throw together the brilliant no-bake pumpkin pie with a ginger-snap crust (Key elements, no bake, and I didn't want to be responsible for pie crust in our rolling-pin-less kitches) -- And in the grocery store there was NO CANNED PUMPKIN. And the sales lady was like, "Oh, honey...You just need to roast a pumpkin and mash it right up!" Yeah, right...I don't roast turkeys and pumpkins in the same day, sorry lady!! So that morphed into the chocolate-silk-ice-cream-pudding pie my mom and I like to make, except with butterscotch pudding instead of chocolate...in case there were any weirdos who didn't like chocolate. We paired this with these Nestle Toll House pecan bars (again, no pie crust), and everyone seemed pretty happy. Thank goodness for our swanky-cooking-show-top-and-bottom-double-decker-ovens! Of note, I could not find any usual Karo syrup in the grocery store, but I did find "SUGAR SYRUP, Gluten Free! Made from corn!" (Isn't sugar gluten free anyway?) It was totally clear without the slight yellow tinge of Karo and about 100 times thicker -- I am pretty sure I made pecan bars for our guests with high fructose corn syrup...oops? They tasted great, anyway!
We had Damian, our ER doctor friend from Puerto Rico/Ohio, the Nottinghams, fresh from Denver, only a short drive away in New Plymouth, the Patels, our internal medicine duo of friends from Minnesota/North Carolina, the Toroks, an American GP and his wife who is in Patrick's running club, and the lone Kiwi, my boss, Athol (his wife went out with girlfriends, his kids went out with their friends, and he was stuck at home, so we were obliged to offer him his first Thanksgiving feast).
We threw in a spinach salad from our garden, so that we would at least offer 1 "real" vegetable...Everyone else brought mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn bread..and the essential sweet potatoes swimming in butter and brown sugar and topped with marshmallows. These were Athol's favorite. We stuffed ourselves, and thanks to our landlords' giant table with an extra leaf, had the first ever sit-down FOF. We regaled Athol with stories of "what you do in America for Thanskgiving", like making turkyes from a cut-out of your hand, dressing up as pilgrims and Indians, watching football, playing football, playing games with your family. Then happily full of food we sent everyone home with leftover turkey and dessert. Since we had to be away from our families, we were so glad to have good new and old friends to share the day with here. It was a great night!!
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