Red, White, and Cordon Bleu: Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner!

My first day of class was scheduled for Tuesday, October 9^th. I always kind of wondered why they would start on a Tuesday, but couldn’t come up with any real reason, so I put it out of my mind.

Flash forward to IKEA: We were shopping and browsing and having a good time on our first full day here, and an announcement comes over the intercom. It was a cheery woman’s voice explaining the store’s Thanksgiving hours and specials in the cafeteria. “Be sure to join us on Thanksgiving, Monday, October 8^th.”

So THAT’S why my classes started on a Tuesday!

With this new knowledge, we knew we should celebrate. After all, how often do you get to have two Thanksgivings in one year? I never asked anyone if they have little cartoons of Pilgrims and Indians, too…I thought that might be a little rude.

When we got home and checked our mail, we found a plethora of Thanksgiving coupons waiting for us. With coupons in hand (a few days later), we headed off to our local grocery stores to complete our Thanksgiving shopping list.

There are two grocery stores within walking distance of our apartment, Loblaw's and Metro, so we started at the bigger one with the better coupons. Chad really wanted to try to cook a Butterball turkey, so we picked out the smallest one we could find (a whopping 15-pound bird!) and went from there. He loves stuffing, so we stocked up on stuffing boxes for a steal, and I got the materials for homemade pumpkin muffins, crushed-Oreo-cookie-ice-cream-pie, and mashed potatoes with sour cream and gravy. Sparkling cider rounded out our meal.

See: "Cook from Frozen"

I made the muffins and pie a few days in advance between organizing the apartment and cleaning and researching the best way to cook a turkey. We were surprised to find many websites who suggested cooking the bird from frozen, rather than thawing him in the fridge. On taking a closer look, the instructions on the Butterball turkey wrapper also said to cook him from frozen, so we decided to give that a go.

Up until Canadian Thanksgiving Day, we had been living without internet. The company we were working with fell through, so we called someone else and asked that they come to install our router as soon as possible. “ASAP” was Thanksgiving Day.

So, working around the possibility of an internet installment guy coming right before dinner was ready, we prepared the turkey, put him in the oven, and I started on the mashed potatoes while Chad played Zelda to pass the time.

The internet guy did come, but not so close to dinner that it was a chore to keep the potatoes warm. We even offered him a pumpkin muffin when he was finished.

I taught Chad how to carve a turkey, though he let me finish the whole bird, and we scraped the stuffing out of him to serve.

Finally, we sat down to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey turned out great, some of the moistest breast meat I have ever had! We had potatoes and gravy and the stuffing that came in the bird, pumpkin muffins, sparkling grape juice, and ice cream pie for dessert. Life is good.

Plans for American Thanksgiving: Chad wants to make a pumpkin pie for dessert! We haven’t discussed dinner, but maybe we’ll have ham this time: we had a lot of leftover turkey! Here are a few more photos of our day!