Luka's first Thanksgiving

As has become a bit of a tradition in our household - Chris and I once again hosted Thanksgiving supper for (mostly) American 'orphan' expatriates spending this holiday far away from the warmth, hospitality and food of their families.  I happened to read through our thanksgiving escapades of two years ago in Kabul (see post here) and chuckled at what Thanksgiving pre-Luka looked like, versus this year.

Now if you have ever been at our Thanksgiving table it probably means that you have lived either in Baghdad, Kabul or Dili.  For the past six years, we have hosted probably close to 150 people for Thanksgiving - mostly Americans, with the odd foreigner* (sic) thrown in for good measure.  So it was that we co-hosted our first Thanksgiving in the USAID compound of the Green Zone in 2006.  This entailed four ovens, 3 turkeys, 50 guests, and an insane amount of booze.  The following year in Kabul was our first solo attempt.  We made due with a bird we found through a friend of a friend, were forced to use a can of old cranberry sauce I found on a derelict shelf in a local supermarket, and had to opt for mashed potatoes over sweet potatoes that were not available.  Despite these shortcoming, we hosted 25 very happy friends for a wonderful meal.  Enter 2009, the year of our most legendary of Thanksgiving feasts (and the topic of the link above).  As we cooked our way out of the daily grind of war-torn Kabul, we procured birds, and even made a special trip to Dubai to smuggle in fresh cranberries, celery, sausage, and sweet potatoes. The result was a wonderful Thanksgiving where we hosted 35 guests from American interns to American legend in Afghanistan Nancy Hatch Dupree.

Luka inspects the imported organic turkey, cranberries and
locally procured sweet potatoes

The turkey surgeon at
work to butterfly the
yuppie bird. 

Fast forward to our current island home where we hosted our second Thanksgiving for about 12 friends and colleagues this year.  As with our last island feast, we BBQ'd a bird (well, one of them at least), but it was not just any bird.  I mean, others had turkeys alright.  No, but this was not some Singapore-based, Australian contractor-procured frozen butterball.  No ma'am.  For our feast this year, a friend actually flew in a fresh (not live thank you!), organic turkey from a gourmet butcher in Bondi Beach in Sydney.  That's right.  When I picked up my dear friend and Oxford classmate at the Dili International airport on Wednesday morning at 0700, I was faced with a slightly shellshocked customs officer holding a turkey in one hand and a bag of something I couldn't quite make out in the other.  Rebecca exited the arrivals hall, close on the heels of the customs officer who was by now clasping the turkey in one hand while frantically dialing someone (presumably his supervisor) on his mobile phone.  After a quick dash back to the car to store Ms. Becca's heavy bag, Luka and I rushed over to the quarantine office (me secretly hoping I didn't recognize anyone from our cat import fiasco).  I stormed into the quarantine office and came face to face with the clearly overwhelmed customs officer, still not able to reach his supervisor and started firing off in Tetun explaining that tomorrow is an important day in America, and that I am going to need that bird.  "Bon dia maun, aban iha loran bo'ot husi Amerika, entaun hau presiza ida ne'e" pointing at the bird....oh, and 'by the way, I'm going to need those eight Scotch Fillets as well!'  Fortunately, we walked off with the bird and the steaks.... oh, and the cheese, celery, cranberry relish, five bottles of wine, corn syrup, fresh pecans, and of course Tim Tams.

On the menu this year was thus a BBQ'd butterflied organic yuppie turkey from Sydney, one oven-baked butterball (donated by a friend at the US Embassy), our sausage and sage stuffing (made with chorizo for lack of other sausage), maple glazed sweet potato casserole (made with local honey for lack of maple syrup), simple green beans with sun dried tomato and pine nuts, corn bread muffins, gravy and our 53% density organic cranberry sauce.

And yes, there were pies.  While it goes without saying that I now believe pastry chefs have one of the most difficult jobs in the entire world (perhaps after POTUS and mom) and yes, we may or may not have wasted about 4kg of failed butter in the dough - we did in fact successfully string together 2 sort of holding on butter pie crusts and one crisco backup - but pies we had including home made pumpkin pie (from real fresh pumpkin) and awesome pecan pie thanks to the Australian-procured nuts - I mean, how wrong can you go with pecans, sugar and some egg??

We give thanks!

Okay, I just realized that we are six paragraphs into a post without a mention of Master Luka - so most importantly of course - this was Luka's first Thanksgiving - and as it were, the topic of our thanksgiving this year.  So with friends and colleagues gathered around a table in Dili, we gave thanks for friends, family far away, and especially, so very, very especially, our little Luka.