I think I saw a Turkey...

These are words whispered by American expats throughout town. Turkeys are hard to come by. Really hard to find and HORRIBLY expensive. Like Hope Diamond Expensive. But, as I tell myself we only eat it once a year so it is worth the splurge.

Yep, I just paid $56 dollars for about 7lbs of turkey. I am a desperate turkey girl

You have to realize when you are in a place that has NO idea about the super holiday Thanksgiving it can be hella hard trying to plan a meal. Actually, it isn't impossible but it takes planning. This is how we plan:

1) One month before Thanksgiving pull out all of Mom's recipes and write down ingredient list
2) Go to store and realize most things you need aren't on list
3) Go back home, get on Internet and find things needed on list
4) Spend days on ingredient list trying to figure out whether or not Amazon will get a certain ingredient to you in time. If not, go to website #2 and then #3 to see if you can get certain ingredients
5) Realize that one ingredient isn't sold in New Zealand so then go back to Internet to research hacks on how to make ingredient from scratch
6) Get ingredient list for hacked recipe for the actual ingredient that you need
7) Develop anxiety about going to store so close to Thanksgiving
8) Get to store and realize it's empty like normal because no one knows its Thanksgiving
9) Find ingredient for hacked recipe and rejoice
10) Go home and wait for box to arrive with all other ingredients so you can put together a proper Thanksgiving meal

Oh and did I mention Turkeys are hard to find? And when you do find them you get sad. Really sad because their turkeys are about the size of a large chicken back home. So I usually spend about an hour grumbling about the price of the turkey and then seriously concerned about the sickly size of the bird. I have to admit, it makes it SO much easier to thaw, brine and cook!!! Hubby smoked ours last year (mostly because it was tiny and able to fit in his grill)

No, that is a turkey...not a chicken.

What really sucks is that living in Hawaii, we had really good sized turkeys wandering around in our yard ALL the time. We could have had free Thanksgiving turkey every day!

Wild turkeys in our yard in Hawaii

With my two years worth of research and now one Thanksgiving and two Christmases under my belt I feel that I am an expert of finding stashes of American goodies that are necessary for a good Southern style holiday.

If you are interested in finding Turkeys in New Zealand here are two great places that have them:
Crozier's Turkeys
Canter Valley Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!