Ha! Jenny made the filling, I just fit the square pastry sheet to the round pan. Seriously. I'm going to start a company making pie crusts in the tin, NZ will thank me
You can get the ready-made ones at US2U, I think. I’ve learned to enjoy making pie crust (granted, I love baking in general, so YMMV). I’ve found graham crackers at the aforementioned US store and the dojos in Wellington, but digestives, plain wheatens, and I think the shredded wheatmeal biscuits are all close enough.
I didn’t love thanksgiving growing up, but now it’s one of my favourite holidays. No religion, just gratitude, food, and the people you love.
Last summer we saw wild turkeys in Minnesota and Iowa, wandering in packs right through town. They're big, and very pretty! Ben Franklin famously thought they should be the national bird, not the arrogant and foul-tempered eagle. He lost that one
Aye, mate. Where do I begin? We've done it both ways, having been here more or less for 17 years. Last year we went back to 'Murica to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with our people. It was sublime and challenging, ultimately reminding us that while we cannot choose who we are relatives with, there are sometimes good reasons for keeping reasonable boundaries.
We are dual citizens now. This affords us the right to adopt/maintain the traditions that resonate with us. We've decided to keep Thanksgiving, because while not always perfect it remains a repository of many happy memories. We've had a 5.7kg turkey (biggest we could find) thawing in the garage fridge for a few days and will cook it Saturday, celebrating with family, yes, and a few kiwi neighbours we want to show some love. I'll spend Friday - tomorrow - off work, preparing the feast, watching American Football, day drinking like old times, and reveling in being alive. Despite my cynical tendency to complain about all manner of things, I do understand I (we) have heaps to be thankful for. And I am thankful. Wishing you and all who gather at your crib the best, DK.
Hey Brad! Love this. There are always boundaries, no? I'm feel the choice really severely this year, after a bunch of years of just skipping Tday altogether. This we year we super excited to do it! And my kids don't really know why! So we gotta *keep choosing* to celebrate it, if we want it to be a thing in our NZ lives...I love the intentionality but there's a highwire act to it all. If we stop there's no nation around us to carry it on. And the link to whatever a Tempe AZ turkey bowl was is now thin indeed. Good on ya for inviting Kiwis to yours! Enjoy your day beers & football & gratitude, mate. All best to you & yours!!
Since moving to the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving with another friend's family because none of us have family in the US. Moving to the US from Europe,we didn't have the thanksgiving tradition before. We are trying to celebrate it like the Americans 🙂
Welcome!! Thanksgiving’s doors are wide open. All you have to do is move there and you can claim it as deeply as you feel. Hope you had a good one. It’s my favorite American holiday, for sure. I wish you many happy returns!
yes it's so bizarre isn't it, Friendsgiving!? but also a fun way to double down on nostalgia. it's even weirder for me cuz there are so few Canadians where I am that we usually end up doing American thanksgiving, so not only is it a holiday celebrated with non-local friends eating non-local food, it's not even my holiday. 🤣😅
Hi Kaila! Bet you've had some epic Friendsgivings over the years, if off by a month! Wonder how it was in Thailand. In NZ, which is so close to US/Canada in so many ways, the uncanny valley makes celebrating Tday almost **weirder** than it did in Shanghai, where it was established expat bar night. Nostalgia, yes. The feeling gets a bad rap. I mean, that's life right? Hope you & yours had a great holiday!
Hi Lucy! Interesting difference. It's the more careful boundary I notice here. In TX you bring a six and throw it in the ice with the rest and then kinda drink whatever. I suppose it would be rude to drink only beer you *didn't* bring? But it'd be far ruder to police the line. The ide is that party is piling up treasure together, there's more than enough for all & everyone's welcome to the horde. A fine line between the two systems but I definitely feel the difference, and even a tiny note of sad loneliness when nobody here even asks to drink the beer I thought I brought to share!
Is there a lot of difference in the beers in TX? I may be biased as in my formative years, we basically had two large breweries and you were either a Lion (brown in Wellington, red in Auckland) drinker or a DB drinker. Steinlager arrived and muddied the waters with its higher alcohol content. Then I think Macs showed up in its stubbie bottles. Before that every day was “crate day”. Anyway, I remember seeing one guy arrive at a party with his six pack of Lion brown and proceed to help himself to a beer from the one lonely six pack of Macs gold. I remember thinking what a rude prick. Now I’d probably just think “NAct voter “
Actually I remembered it incorrectly, he didn’t bring anything, and when he was offered a beer he took one of the few good ones. Not that I’m one to hold a grudge haha!
Love the correction! He should've brought something, but once there the party's gotta take care of all :)
Thanks for the deep dive on beer etiquette, too. There's no cheap bitter in the US, the cheap stuff is all lager, so there was no category jump to be concerned about. But I think I'm romanticizing a certain narrow category of party, where we're all bringing more or less interchangeable mid-price Mexican lagers, rather than 30-packs of Bud Light?
The crazy thing is, though, it's all hard seltzers and booze now! Beer has dropped off crazy fast. Last time I brought a six to a house in texas (my sister's) I was the only one who drank it, because everyone else t was drinking tequila and soda. A tectonic shift. Curious to see if this comes to NZ!
I love your reflections. I don't want to school you but wasn't the first thanksgiving declared by the Massachusetts governor after the Mystic River massacre of Pequot people in the mid 1600s?
Hi Helen! Thanks for reading, and please school away! I'm out here learning. I had a vague sense that the Mystic River massacre was in there--I think that's theopener to Tommy Orange's There, There which I read years ago? Seems as good a first Tday as any, and as grim. Probably should have worked it in here. At one point I was going to mention Lincoln declaring the first national holiday in 1863 not long after ordering the hanging of 38 Mankato people in the Dakota War. Long enough as is, though, so I just flopped about in the myths. Funny, ain't it, how we can know the dark side and still throw--still *need* to throw--a meaningful party.
Beautiful pie Dan, great work! One might even say... Ka pai!
Ha! Jenny made the filling, I just fit the square pastry sheet to the round pan. Seriously. I'm going to start a company making pie crusts in the tin, NZ will thank me
You can get the ready-made ones at US2U, I think. I’ve learned to enjoy making pie crust (granted, I love baking in general, so YMMV). I’ve found graham crackers at the aforementioned US store and the dojos in Wellington, but digestives, plain wheatens, and I think the shredded wheatmeal biscuits are all close enough.
I didn’t love thanksgiving growing up, but now it’s one of my favourite holidays. No religion, just gratitude, food, and the people you love.
Reckon the turkey was the closest they could find to a goose... the traditional 'big holiday bird' of Britain
Last summer we saw wild turkeys in Minnesota and Iowa, wandering in packs right through town. They're big, and very pretty! Ben Franklin famously thought they should be the national bird, not the arrogant and foul-tempered eagle. He lost that one
Aye, mate. Where do I begin? We've done it both ways, having been here more or less for 17 years. Last year we went back to 'Murica to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with our people. It was sublime and challenging, ultimately reminding us that while we cannot choose who we are relatives with, there are sometimes good reasons for keeping reasonable boundaries.
We are dual citizens now. This affords us the right to adopt/maintain the traditions that resonate with us. We've decided to keep Thanksgiving, because while not always perfect it remains a repository of many happy memories. We've had a 5.7kg turkey (biggest we could find) thawing in the garage fridge for a few days and will cook it Saturday, celebrating with family, yes, and a few kiwi neighbours we want to show some love. I'll spend Friday - tomorrow - off work, preparing the feast, watching American Football, day drinking like old times, and reveling in being alive. Despite my cynical tendency to complain about all manner of things, I do understand I (we) have heaps to be thankful for. And I am thankful. Wishing you and all who gather at your crib the best, DK.
Hey Brad! Love this. There are always boundaries, no? I'm feel the choice really severely this year, after a bunch of years of just skipping Tday altogether. This we year we super excited to do it! And my kids don't really know why! So we gotta *keep choosing* to celebrate it, if we want it to be a thing in our NZ lives...I love the intentionality but there's a highwire act to it all. If we stop there's no nation around us to carry it on. And the link to whatever a Tempe AZ turkey bowl was is now thin indeed. Good on ya for inviting Kiwis to yours! Enjoy your day beers & football & gratitude, mate. All best to you & yours!!
Since moving to the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving with another friend's family because none of us have family in the US. Moving to the US from Europe,we didn't have the thanksgiving tradition before. We are trying to celebrate it like the Americans 🙂
Welcome!! Thanksgiving’s doors are wide open. All you have to do is move there and you can claim it as deeply as you feel. Hope you had a good one. It’s my favorite American holiday, for sure. I wish you many happy returns!
yes it's so bizarre isn't it, Friendsgiving!? but also a fun way to double down on nostalgia. it's even weirder for me cuz there are so few Canadians where I am that we usually end up doing American thanksgiving, so not only is it a holiday celebrated with non-local friends eating non-local food, it's not even my holiday. 🤣😅
Hi Kaila! Bet you've had some epic Friendsgivings over the years, if off by a month! Wonder how it was in Thailand. In NZ, which is so close to US/Canada in so many ways, the uncanny valley makes celebrating Tday almost **weirder** than it did in Shanghai, where it was established expat bar night. Nostalgia, yes. The feeling gets a bad rap. I mean, that's life right? Hope you & yours had a great holiday!
Your rented room was no doubt rowdy! Happy Thanksgiving, Dan.
TURKEY TIME
I only drink my own beer at a bbq. Why would I drink someone else’s? What’s the tradition in the US?
Hi Lucy! Interesting difference. It's the more careful boundary I notice here. In TX you bring a six and throw it in the ice with the rest and then kinda drink whatever. I suppose it would be rude to drink only beer you *didn't* bring? But it'd be far ruder to police the line. The ide is that party is piling up treasure together, there's more than enough for all & everyone's welcome to the horde. A fine line between the two systems but I definitely feel the difference, and even a tiny note of sad loneliness when nobody here even asks to drink the beer I thought I brought to share!
Is there a lot of difference in the beers in TX? I may be biased as in my formative years, we basically had two large breweries and you were either a Lion (brown in Wellington, red in Auckland) drinker or a DB drinker. Steinlager arrived and muddied the waters with its higher alcohol content. Then I think Macs showed up in its stubbie bottles. Before that every day was “crate day”. Anyway, I remember seeing one guy arrive at a party with his six pack of Lion brown and proceed to help himself to a beer from the one lonely six pack of Macs gold. I remember thinking what a rude prick. Now I’d probably just think “NAct voter “
Actually I remembered it incorrectly, he didn’t bring anything, and when he was offered a beer he took one of the few good ones. Not that I’m one to hold a grudge haha!
Love the correction! He should've brought something, but once there the party's gotta take care of all :)
Thanks for the deep dive on beer etiquette, too. There's no cheap bitter in the US, the cheap stuff is all lager, so there was no category jump to be concerned about. But I think I'm romanticizing a certain narrow category of party, where we're all bringing more or less interchangeable mid-price Mexican lagers, rather than 30-packs of Bud Light?
The crazy thing is, though, it's all hard seltzers and booze now! Beer has dropped off crazy fast. Last time I brought a six to a house in texas (my sister's) I was the only one who drank it, because everyone else t was drinking tequila and soda. A tectonic shift. Curious to see if this comes to NZ!
I love your reflections. I don't want to school you but wasn't the first thanksgiving declared by the Massachusetts governor after the Mystic River massacre of Pequot people in the mid 1600s?
Hi Helen! Thanks for reading, and please school away! I'm out here learning. I had a vague sense that the Mystic River massacre was in there--I think that's theopener to Tommy Orange's There, There which I read years ago? Seems as good a first Tday as any, and as grim. Probably should have worked it in here. At one point I was going to mention Lincoln declaring the first national holiday in 1863 not long after ordering the hanging of 38 Mankato people in the Dakota War. Long enough as is, though, so I just flopped about in the myths. Funny, ain't it, how we can know the dark side and still throw--still *need* to throw--a meaningful party.
Yes - in its purest form, it's a nice sentiment to give thanks and break bread with friends and whānau.
Harvest Festivals are possibly the closeat thing NZ has to the US' Thankagiving - https://findnewzealand.co.nz/harvest-festivals-in-new-zealand-a-seasonal-celebration-of-food-fun-and-community/
Yes! And I cannot WAIT for Harvest fest here, staggering around with a plastic wine cup on a lanyard around my neck. Last year ooh boy we had a time