So we planned our menu and got our ingredients to the best of our ability. It was impossible to find cranberries or gravy, so we had to miss out on one of my favorite parts of the meal, and got creative to make our own gravy with cream of mushroom soup, onions, and asparagus! It was quite nice actually. Stuffing is also missing from the shelves in Taiwan, so we decided to make it completely from scratch. Greta spent 3 hours on Wednesday night preparing it, and it was definitely worth it! Sooo delicious, so now she can spend 3 hours on all of our next Thanksgivings making it, cause I'm not going back to the box (even though I do enjoy the taste of boxed stuffing). We also had mashed potatoes, that I made without a masher... really not as hard as you might think, just a luxury to have a masher I guess. We bought whole sweet potatoes, cut them up and made a glaze to cover them in, super delish. Greta made the glaze and slightly burned it though, and I realized after that I should I have been the one to make the glaze seeing as how I have such experience in making karmel coating. There was corn too, and THE DUCK!
Being in Taiwan, finding turkey I think is not an option. We pass this corner shop that has ducks hanging up every day on the way to work, so we decided a while ago that we would get one of those ducks to act as our Thanksgiving turkey. We weren't sure if they would speak English or not, so I had Helen write me a note in Chinese saying that we wanted a duck, without any of the gooey insides (since they love to give you all that shit here) and cut up into pieces. Well, they didn't speak English, so good thing I got the note, and when I showed it to them they gave it an odd stare, but got to work on our duck. I really wanted to capture the time he then spent cutting apart our duck, but decided I probably shouldn't.
The place our duck came from, and what got us our duck!
First, he chopped off the head, with a huge cleaver. It totally reminded me of A Christmas Story. He delicately shaved off the sides with a knife and layered the meat onto a plate, when that was finished he then hoisted the carcass up and kinda wrung it out over the plate of meat, to let all the duck juices fall on top. Then he flipped her over and kept chopping, all the while scrapping the chopped up bits into a tray. Later, they took this tray and cooked it up with some sauces and vegetables and spices and handed it to us in a sack, along with our plate of meat. We also go some sort of bread/tortilla thing.. not really sure what it is or what we are intended to do with it. We got all of this for $430 NT, about $15 US dollars. 
Not only did getting all the crap to make our meal prove to be difficult, but doing so with NO oven, 1 pot, 1 pan, and 2 stove top burners, proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially in keeping everything warm by the time we were ready to eat. Did I mention we also lack a microwave? Well it was a fun time for Greta and I to cook and discover our abilities to make such wonderful things, especially not from a box!
The best part!? I didn't have to miss out on pumpkin pie! Our first idea was to make a "no bake" pumpkin pie, but we couldn't find the things to make it. Then Greta tried a few bakeries but no luck. Thanks goodness for a fabulous teacher we work with, who got us one from a Costco in Taipei! She doesn't even like pumpkin pie, and is from South Africa so she doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but I'm thankful that she went out of her way to help us get such a delicious necessity for the holiday!!
It's amazing how photogenic we both are, really. It's a wonder we aren't in magazines.. :)
Right now for everyone back home, Thanksgiving is just getting started, although I'm sure my mom's been up for hours working on the turkey, it's drawn to an end as it's now past midnight in Taiwan. I missed being with the rest of my family, but we had a great meal over here! Now.. onto Christmas!
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