Our Australian Thanksgiving Feast

As Americans living in Australia, we still celebrated Thanksgiving in November, even though it wasn't a holiday there. Having been there for several years we knew the difficulties of assembling the traditional meal and getting time off from work to celebrate. In 1992, we visited an American friend who was in Melbourne on a job exchange. It was November and she bubbled with excitement when she told us she had invited 25 Australian co-workers for a traditional American Thanksgiving.
Not wanting to discourage her, we pitched in to help prepare for the event. Molly was appalled when she saw the exorbitant price for a turkey, but had no choice but to pay the $50. We trekked from store to store, but had no luck in finding fresh or canned cranberry sauce. Canned pumpkin pie filling proved elusive as well.
Making the pumpkin pies became the major undertaking as the clock ticked away the time towards the guests' arrival.
We had no recipe, as the house included in Molly's job exchange had only Australian cookbooks. There were no normal sized pie pans either, just smaller tart pans that were quite shallow. We pooled our memories of the ingredients for pumpkin pie and had a vague notion about changing the oven temperature part way through the cooking. We'd found a large pumpkin, a Queensland Blue pumpkin with a grayish, blue thick skin. We cut it open, removed the seeds and cooked the wedges. Then we mashed it and mixed in spices and eggs.
We had to make the pie crust from scratch as well, as we couldn't find frozen pie shells or a mix.
For variety in the pies, we'd also attempted cherry pies. The cans of cherries in the stores were not pie filling. They required pitting the cherries then making the sauce with cornstarch to thicken it.
Fortunately some of the other Thanksgiving foods were easier to get and prepare. We had dressing, gravy, and mashed potatoes. Luckily, we'd been able to find sweet potatoes too.
By the time the 25 Australians arrived, we were exhausted from wrestling with the pumpkin and searching the stores for ingredients. Everyone seemed to enjoy the American-style feast and commented that it was similar to their Christmas meal, though that was usually a roast goose. They were tentative with the pumpkin pie, as in Australia they roast pumpkin and eat it as a vegetable like we use acorn squash. Turning it into a dessert sounded odd to them. It certainly was a Thanksgiving that I'll remember.

Story ID:	5238
Written by:	Virginia Allain (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Organization:	none
Story type:	Travel
Location:	Melbourne Victoria Australia
Year:	1991