Chinese Thanksgiving

Last year for Thanksgiving my two co-workers and I went out to a restaurant and had to eat substitutes that we were used to for the traditional meal. Instead of turkey we had chicken feet, instead of mashed potatoes we had potato wedges, and instead of pumpkin pie we had a roasted pumpkin. 

This year for Thanksgiving I was able to find a turkey thanks to a new co-worker who knew of an online foreigner meat store. I decided to do a thank you dinner for my TA's and friends. 

First, if you are American than you know we buy things by the pound and the rest of the world uses the metric system. When the meat store advertised a 4kg and 6kg turkey, I decided to buy the 6kg turkey because I thought it wouldn't be that big. 

IT WAS THIRTEEN POUNDS!

The circled thing is the bones. I have no idea if I did a good job or not. Does it look okay?

  Now I had to figure out how to cook my monstrosity. They don't sell what we consider traditional ovens in China since 90% of the foods here are made in either woks or rice cookers. The ovens they sell here are toaster ovens and I knew that my heavy and giant turkey wasn't going to fit in my toaster oven, even if the store said it would. I immediately looked up recipes for rice cooker turkeys and they actually have a few! Since we work on Thanksgiving Thursday and one of my friends doesn't get off work on Sunday until the evening, I decided to have the dinner on Sunday night instead of the usual lunch time. 

Since I have never met anyone that cooked a turkey in a rice cooker I knew that I had to test out a few recipes first, which I did with a chicken. This is the recipe I chose for the potatoes, vegetables, and turkey. For the gravy I chose to do this recipe. 

To fit the turkey into my rice cooker I had to butcher the beast by myself, which was a first for me. I then had to do cook the turkey in sections. It only took 30 minutes to cook the turkey that was in the rice cooker, but I had to do it five times. I started at 2:30 pm and got done at 5:30 pm. While the turkey and vegetables were going, I made apple crisp and apple pie. To my sadness I forgot to put the flour in the pie, so it came out soupy but people still seemed to like it. I included vanilla ice cream as a topper as well. 

The "drained" pie

For drinks I made apple cider which was a big hit! They don't have the drink in China and almost two containers of apple juice were gone by the end of the night. I also had Czech wine, Sprite, Coca-Cola, and my friend brought rice wine. Another friend made banana and chocolate muffins to share with us. 

My friend Susan brought me flowers.

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with my Thanksgiving. I had cooked everything and it was all delicious! My friends asked to take some of the leftovers home with them which I was very happy to do. 

I also taught them about the wish bone which they found very fun and exciting. A few mentioned they wanted to try it with chicken bones. 

At one moment, I was looking out at all my guests eating and chatting and laughing and I got emotional. It was fulfilling to see people I loved eating the food I made and having a good time. Even though I wasn't around my American friends and family, at least I could eat turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and roasted vegetables like I could in America and I could still feel loved.