Happy thanksgiving

Yes I know thanksgiving is not a New Zealand celebrated festival. In fact some NZ friends of ours were at a thanksgiving dinner in LA one year and a woman asked them if they celebrated thanksgiving. They replied that as it was about the pilgrim fathers surviving in America it wasn't really relevant to NZ and the woman replied "Well I suppose you don't have anything to be thankful for in New Zealand"!

Years ago I read that Mia Farrow used thanksgiving as an opportunity to remember her adopted children's birthparents and that seemed such a great idea that I've copied it since then. At the moment the four children at home all have different (biological) mothers and fathers - I quite like shocking people by saying I have children from 4 different fathers!

Joe and Hannah came to celebrate with us and we got out photos of Lily and Isaac's birthparents and J's mum, then lit a candle and proposed a toast to each set of parents in turn. I proposed the toast for Isaac's parents, Noah proposed the toast for Rachel's parents and Lily and Georgia each proposed a toast to their own parents. It is good to have a time to remember that these are the people who gave our children life and no matter how many negative things have happened this is a core reason to celebrate. We also combined it with the way we celebrate family Friday, loosely based on the Jewish sabbath, so the candles represented too creation and redemption which seemed very apt.

We had roast chicken (rather than turkey) and had some roasted pumpkin with that (rather than the traditional sweet pie) then had Christmas pudding. This was a small sampler pudding I made to test the larger one for Christmas.

I never remember to write down a recipe for Christmas pudding and have to search the Internet for recipes that will fit with the ingredients I have available. This year I didn't want to use breadcrumbs (as Paul broke the food processor in May by filling it to the top with pumpkin soup which leaked into the motor and shorted it!) and only had seven eggs but I found a recipe that has worked pretty well.