Westforth Travels: Our Thanksgiving

Chris and I knew that we really wanted to have a Thanksgiving feast so that we still felt like we were celebrating Thanksgiving and also so it wasn't as hard to be away from all our family. We decided we would make our best attempt at it, however their were a couple of things we had to think about and accomplish before the big turkey day!!

1. Yes, we obviously know they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in England. So, needless to say TURKEYS are very hard to come by before Christmas (in fact they don't even carry them in the grocery stores until then)!! I ended up finding a turkey at Whole Foods and got the smallest one I could, 4.25 kilograms = 9 pounds. Of course because it was Whole Foods and our turkey was probably organic it ended up costing us 32.00 British Pounds = 52.00 US Dollars.
Side note: this was our 1st time making Thanksgiving dinner and neither of us have prepared or made a turkey before...so as you can see for how much we paid "the stakes were high that we couldn't screw it up"!!

2. We both were going to have to work on Thanksgiving, which meant lots of preparation the night before.

3. Chris would HAVE to get home from work before 8pm to help me make all of our favorites we wanted to have!

4. I would have to purchase a few items on my trip back to the US (i.e.-Jiffy cornbread mix, Libby's pumpkin pie filling, and Carnation Evaporated milk) to complete our menu.

5. We had to realize that realistically we probably weren't going to be eating until 8pm London time, which would be right on with when our family usually eats in the US (2pm Central time).

6. We would each need to have responsibilities in the kitchen if we wanted this to happen.
Lisa: prepare turkey and stuffing, make cornbread casserole and appetizer
Chris: make mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie and carve turkey.

Here's our turkey! Did I mention it still had a few feathers on the skin? Don't worry we plucked them, not exactly like our cleaned and prepared turkeys back in the US!!
And who do you think thought it would be funny to make a face on the turkey?? (hmm...Chris)

It's ready to go in...massaged in olive oil, seasoned with sea salt, and carrots, celery, and chicken broth at the bottom.

Did I mention our oven is in degrees Celsius?? Thank goodness for the conversions on the Internet!!
Our oven is pretty small too...this was the smallest roasting pan I could find!