Dirty Jokesgiving

As the old saying goes:  “You can take the boy out of America, but you can’t keep the boy away from American food.”

That’s a famous quote, right?

Anyway, the weeks leading up to the end of November were marked by talk of nothing other than… Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a holiday which revolves around delicious food, and seeing as there is no delicious food in this country, Australians don’t celebrate Turkey Day.  No turkey.  No mashed potatoes.  No cranberry sauce.  Neither Pilgrims nor Indians.  No Black Friday sales.  Australia carries on as usual on the fourth Thursday in November.  Strange.

Actually, outside of the United States and Canada, nobody really celebrates Thanksgiving except for some small town in the Netherlands, a barely populated island in the Pacific, and Liberia.  So really, outside of the United States and Canada, nobody really celebrates Thanksgiving.

So, how can we Americans abroad celebrate our favorite fatty holiday???

There’s a formula.

We started with a team of Americans, united to bring Thanksgiving to the land down under.  Actually, it was a team of five Americans, three Australians, two Germans, a Dutch, and a partridge in a pear tree.

As John was still in town, I decided to take off work on the Thursday and Friday in commemoration of Thanksgiving.  And in typical Thanksgiving fashion, the day revolved around food:  first a meal at Bill’s – one of my favorite brunch spots in the neighborhood – then off to the David Jones Food Hall and Coles to purchase all of my ingredients – and then back to the kitchen to cook, cook, cook!  And then, we hopped in a taxi and we went to our multinational Thanksgiving feast!

We were greeted by our lovely hostesses with the mostesses:  Karen and Elsbeth!

Of course, there was turkey!

And a whole buffet of delicious carbs:  mashed potatoes, rolls, mac n cheese, candied yams, green bean casserole, stuffing, more turkey, and cranberry sauce!

There were plenty of ridiculous antics... involving oven mitts... especially as we drank more wine (you can’t imagine how many bottles of wine and beer the 11 of us went through – we nearly finished it before we ate so John and I collected funds and ran over to the liquor store for $150 worth of reinforcements!)

Did I mention that Karen made pumpkin pie – from scratch???  Like, she actually bought a pumpkin and scraped out the innards because they don’t sell pumpkin in a can here.  If only Karen was a man.  A gay man.  A gay man with a thing for Jews.  That would be so hot.

And then we all sat down around the table to dine.

And instead of saying what we’re thankful for, we went around the table and told dirty jokes.  So there’s our formula for Thanksgiving in Australia:  take the U.S. holiday, add tasteless jokes, and douse in copious amounts of booze.  It's very Australian.  I do believe we have a winner!