Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving being a completely North American tradition, is still very much in keeping with the traditional Harvest Festival which is a universal celebration. So this being our first Thanksgiving in Henley I had to pay specific attention to finding just the right quirks for our festivities. My first port of call of course was to the local butcher since John Kentch does not deliver this far south Mr. Machin obliged. He said I need only let him know the week before I needed my Turkey, since they do quite a few at this time for Thanksgiving. What I should have clarified for him at that moment was that I was from a little further north than the American border... When I did call him he wanted to know if I was freezing the bird, or if I had wanted it aired out. I had to explain it was a whole other Thanksgiving tradition to which he laughed and said he would have a beautiful ten pound bird for me for Friday.
Some of you may be confused at my particular excitement towards turkey since I do not eat meat. I love my meat free lifestyle, but who can resist a 4.7kg free-range turkey, who had had a great Henley life and had been butchered three days before it was roasted?!
This is Bob-the-Bird. Look how pretty he is!! Every year my turkeys get named by someone who is going to help eat it. This year this was Mark, who adores Bob-the-Builder so much that it really was not a hard question to answer. This is Bob sitting over his bath of Old Hooky, salted and ready for some tanning bed time!
Gradually over the past few weeks I have been collecting little thinks like cranberry sauce and pumpkin puree in preparation for the feast. All the good china was brought out of storage and washed, the silver was polished and on Friday I picked up some chrysanthemums. I had wanted orange ones, but that was clearly a popular colour that day...
To make sure Bob had a successful roasting, I had to plot out all the necessary basting and salting in specific time increments before hand. Apparently this was only truly possible with the help of my Dalek-tipped pencil of course!
After about four hours of cooking Bob and the feast were ready to be consumed! Unlike previous years, this years' gravy was a particular success for which I would like to thank all the little gravy gods :D As is the tradition, we happily gorged ourselves with decadence!!
What Thanksgiving would be complete without a pumpkin pie, whipped cream and coffee?! I must admit I was completely satisfied with the outcome of all the planning and we will happily be living off of stuffing, turkey potatoes and gravy for decades to come...