A Kiwi Thanksgiving

Happy first day of Summer!
Yup, that's right. New Zealand starts their seasons on the first of the month. We all slept outside last night under the stars. It was beautiful! There were tons of shooting stars, and we can see the Large Magellic Cloud and the Small Magellic Cloud and a bunch of constellations. It's kind of funny, but the skies are actually much more similar here than I expected... There are all the big constellations we see up north, like Orion, Sirius, Andromeda... They're all just upside down. Which is kind of funny, and a little bit disorienting. Of course, there are a bunch of stars that we never see in the northern hemisphere, too.
It was really nice to wake up with the sun (even though it was ridiculously early... ) and listen to the dawn chorus and go for a run. Now I've been up for almost 3 hours and it's only 8! So much time left in the day! Which is good, because I have a lot to get done. Directed research projects are going full steam ahead, and man do I have a lot of charts and graphs and tables to wrap my head around. But I think we made it over the hump, so now its just a matter of finishing everything before the deadline on Saturday. But with a start like this morning, I should be pretty well set.
    Last weekend we took a little while off from writing our reports to celebrate Thanksgiving Kiwi style. It was really fun. We were preparing for 50 people, and we made sure that absolutely no one had an excuse to go hungry, especially because not that many people actually showed up. Since we only have one kitchen, we started prepping for the Sunday feast on Friday, and kitchen activity continued basically right up to when we served Thanksgiving dinner three days later. This was partly a function of how much food we cooked, but also oven space. I was in charge of the pumpkin pies (I made four!) and helped out making pie crusts for everyone else, too. Everyone had a great time helping out... this group makes even doing the dishes a great time.

    Sunday was a really lovely day, and we turned the Wharekai into a really pretty dining room with all the food laid out and set up tables outside. I guess that California thanksgivings can be pretty warm, too, but for most people it was the first thanksgiving in short sleeves and sunshine. So we all dressed up and enjoyed the banquet.

Yummy apetizers... shrimp cocktails, cheese and crackers, baked brie and mussels. Yeah, we ate well.

Sitting down to enjoy the feast.

The dessert board. That's a summer berry cake in the foreground, the white things with kiwifruit and strawberries are Pavlova, a traditional New Zealand dessert made of merangue and custard and deliciousness, chocolate hazelnut pies, and my pumpkin pies in the background. Yes, we had enough food.

    We definitely made enough food.. we're still eating pumpkin pie for breakfast (the best way to eat it) and had plenty of other left overs, too. Which is how Thanksgiving is supposed to work. We certainly have much to be thankful for: good food, great company, and a wonderful time in New Zealand.
 smiles!