Thanksgiving with a Tiny Oven

First, watch this video.

Who doesn’t have a battle ax, chainsaw and bazooka in their kitchen!?

Ok, now watch this one.

Maybe you don’t care for the Muppets…I think they are hilaaaarious. 

Fortunately, I did not have to skewer my own turkey or deal with talking pumpkins this Thanksgiving.  Also, having been in Japan for over a year now, I was able to approach Thanksgiving preparations with much more confidence. 

If you want to prepare a turkey for Thanksgiving and you live in Japan, this is what I recommend:

Step 1: They do sell turkeys at Costco, but unless you have a big enough oven this option is out of the question.  We ordered a tiny 5 lb turkey from a website called “The Meat Guy.”  It’s great. Order about a week in advance.  The website even allows you to choose a specified day and time of delivery.  

The turkey-sitting in an 8x8in pan.

Step 2: Make sure your turkey is thawed out completely 12-24 hours before you want to roast it. 

Step 3: Brine it!  I followed this recipe (I also added an apple, as you can see) for brining our little turkey.  Brining makes a huge difference in the juiciness of the turkey.  We let ours brine for about 16 hours before roasting.

The turkey brining away.  We had to put it into a backing bag and then into our crisper-it was the only way it would fit into our fridge!

Step 4: Stuff and roast.

Stuffed with wild rice cranberry dressing. Yum!

A perfect fit for our tiny oven!

Step 5: Eat!

This is what the rest of our holiday meal looked like:

Kabocha squash with butter and brown sugar.

Mashed potatoes-because you have to!

A made-up wild rice, cranberry shittake stuffing.  Delish!

Sorry, my gravy is out of focus.  If you make gravy, for mercy's sake, make this one!

Pumpkin-one of the best desserts (or, let's be awesome, breakfasts too!) ever.

 Our holiday was delightful in every way.  Flowing with apple cider, champagne, and white wine.  Bountiful, delicious food.

So very much for which to be thankful!

Season of Soup Part 2: Tortellini Spinach Pesto

I know I have complained before of some ingredients being difficult to find in Japan.  (Cheese is one, if you recall.) 

Making Chinese soups is a snap.  Finding ingredients for Asian recipes is usually not too hard.  Things like fresh shiitake mushrooms and bamboo shoots, which would otherwise be dried or canned. 

Fabulous.

After the Schezuan soup, I was in the mood for something different.  So I looked to Italy.

I have found and used some great soup recipes on the Eating Well website.  This particular recipe I based off of Eating Well’s Chicken and Spinach Pesto recipe-it's delicious. 

When I made this soup, I basically made the Chicken and Spinach Pesto soup, but added tortellini.  If I could get my hands on Italian sausage, I would have substituted it for the chicken, but alas.  I have yet to discover Italian sausage in the Land of the Rising Sun.  Sigh.

But the chicken is still delightful.  It's an excellent soup.

I recommend wine and Italian bread on the side with tiramisu for dessert. (In my book, these three things go with any meal.)

Yummy!

Find the soup recipe here.

コストコ (Costco)

There is a place in Japan you can go when you need some staple items.

Like cheese.

Scattered about the country there are Costco stores.  When we first got to Japan almost a year ago, we heard murmurings of the supposed Costco and the magical items to be found within. 

Like cheese.

Finally, we went.  As many of you are aware, Costco is a member only store.  Karl and I like to buy as organic and local as we can manage…but we sold out to the big corporation in the name of…cheese.  We bought a membership.

As you might imagine, Japan doesn’t really do cheese… You can buy cheese in the regular grocery store.  But it's pretty gross.  (Says the girl who lived in Wisconsin half her life.)

Costco also sells other things that are imported.  Salsa, tortilla chips, breakfast cereal, bagels…the types of things that you really miss from home and can’t find in a typical Japanese supermarket.  They also have household cleaners, laundry detergent and the like. 

It’s comforting to the homesick…in a massive, corporate sort of way.  Once in a while, a trip to Costco is a definite plus when living in Japan. 

If, that is, you can stand weaving the gigantic American sized shopping carts in and out of the massive aisles…amongst huge amounts of people who are used to driving tiny carts. 

Patience is a necessity when it comes to shopping at Costco in Japan.  It just is. 

But it is soooooo worth the cheese.