It was just about a year ago that Tommy and I were on our “look see” trip to check out schools and find a place to live. Our last Thanksgiving in Hong Kong was a blur of jetlag and apartment hunting. This year, November 22 was a regular day for school and work, so we celebrated last Saturday.  We shared the holiday with two other American families at our apartment.

In true family fashion, everyone brought something. After determining it impossible to cook a big enough turkey in any of our tiny, finicky ovens, we agreed to buy precooked birds from ThreeSixty, the local organic supermarket. We opted for two unstuffed 9-pound turkeys, thinking they would be more likely to fit in the oven. The cost was just under HK$500 – or about $60 each, and they each came with a free jar of Heinz Turkey Gravy. The two birds warmed up nicely in the oven – and stayed moist and delicious. In fact, those precooked, rewarmed birds turned out to be better than any turkey I have ever roasted on my own. There were no Pillsbury crescent rolls to be found, but “Japanese style soft bun” served us well. The lack of refrigerator rolls was balanced by the abundance of Cool Whip¹and a bewildering selection of cranberry sauces. All the other trimmings were homemade – mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and apple, pumpkin and pecan pies.*

Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Do-over

While the meal itself was a success, preparing to have guests over for Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be a lesson in what I had left behind.  The pie plate with the cherries? Not with me. The backup pyrex pie plates? Left behind. Extra silverware? No. The three tablecloths that together disguised a makeshift banquet table? Forgotten. Carving knife or carving board? Nope. Enough glasses to offer drinks? um, no. Still, I was able to source most of what we needed. It would have been better if I had remembered the carving knife before the two turkeys came out of the oven, but the 5-inch knife did the job. My hunt for a tablecloth led me to the shopping alleys in Central called the Lanes.  Haggling earned me a length of fabric speckled with mold – and earned the shopkeeper a return visit from an irate redhead. I ended up with an apology and 4 yards of mold-free fabric lightweight enough to wash in our tiny washing machine. Sadly, I could not locate any Thanksgiving decorations, which led me to overpay for a pie plate decorated with harvest tone stripes.  Extra forks were for sale at CitySuper, a grocery store catering to expats. Because I am an expat, and was shopping in an expat grocery store, I also overpaid for those.  This fact was hammered home by a trip to Shanghai Street a few days after Thanksgiving, where the same forks were available for one tenth the price. I found them alongside glassware, carving knives, cutting boards, pie plates and some decorative peacock toothpicks that could have passed as turkeys.

Check out Luke’s handmade decorations – way better than peacocks!

All in all, it was a great holiday, even without the break. Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?

¹ Did you know Miracle Whip is also easy to find? Now you can visit Hong Kong, safe in the knowledge that two of America’s greatest Whips are readily available. 

^* Corn syrup is not easy to find here.  I did turn up a very expensive bottle of organic vanilla-infused corn syrup in the exact amount necessary for my Pecan Pie recipe. Unfortunately, the vanilla infusion did nothing to hide the smell of the rotten egg I cracked into the nearly finished filling. Fortunately, Tommy found some Korean corn syrup that did a Karo-tastic job in my do-over pie.