On the weekend we gathered some of our North American friends to celebrate Thanksgiving at our home. I was a little daunted at the task of cooking such traditional meals, but with Adrian’s help everything seemed to come together at the end. The most important ingredient – the company – was perfect, and we had an evening filled with laughter and conversation. Plus we had pumpkin pie for dessert.

Roast turkey breast
Netted turkey breast
3 tablespoons minced garlic
tbs olive oil
1 tbs chopped fresh thyme
1/4 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tbs chopped fresh parsley
2 tsp chopped fresh sage or 1/4 tsp dry sage
Salt

Preheat oven to 180 C
Chop garlic and herbs, mix with olive oil
Cover turkey with herb mix, squeeze some inside
Lift string netting and shift position on roast to make removal easier after cooking
Place carrots and celery on tray as a stand
Add ½ cup white wine to bottom of pan
Cover
Cook for 2 hours
Stand for 10 minutes still covered in foil
Slice

Orange-Cranberry sauce
Whisk together 2 cups cranberry juice, 2 teaspoons cornstarch and 1/4 cup brown sugar in a medium saucepan; bring to a simmer over med. low heat; cook for five minutes, whisking occasionally, until mixture is reduced by one third. Stir in 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries, 1 cup orange marmalade, 1/4 teaspoon grated fresh ginger, pinch of allspice.

Reduce heat to low and continue cooking for another 8-10 minutes or until cranberries are slightly rehydrated. Stir in one cup of fresh orange sections, pith removed (don’t use mandarin oranges) and remove from heat. Chill before serving.

Stuffing
1 loaf of day old French bread, cut into 3/4-inch cubes (about 10-12 cups)
2 cups each, chopped onion and celery
6 Tbsp butter
1 green apple, peeled, cored, chopped
3/4 cup of raisins
2 cups vegetable stock
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon sage
Salt and freshly ground pepper (to taste)

Heat a large sauté pan on medium heat. Melt 3 Tbsp butter in the pan, add the bread cubes, and stir to coat the bread pieces with the melted butter. Then let them toast; only turn them when they have become a little browned on a side.

In a large pot, sauté chopped onions and celery on medium high heat with the remaining 3 Tbsp butter until cooked through, about 5-10 minutes. Add the bread. Add chopped green apple, raisins, parsley. Add one cup of the stock. Add sage, salt & pepper.

Cover. Turn heat to low. Cook for an hour or until the apples are cooked through. Check every ten minutes or so and add water or stock as needed while cooking to keep the stuffing moist and keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

My working week became a little bit brighter with a gift from my Secret Santa from the intertubes. Even though my Secret Santa posted this box to me in November from Canada, it only just arrived on my doorstep. It was lovely to find all these tokens from Quebec, especially as Montreal it was a candidate for our new home back in 2008. The package contained many regional bookmarks, a lovely card from Santa, as well as The Shadow of the Wind, Flashman, and a local cookbook with lots of interesting family recipes. Furthermore, some delicious maple sugar, coffee candy, and hot chocolate mix to keep me company when I am curled up with these new novels.

I started Flashman on my metro trip to work this morning, and by 29 pages in I agree with his self-assessment that he is “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady.” I am looking forward to learning about military history from a very interesting perspective, as well as introducing some French-Canadian influences into my Australian-Belgian cooking repertoire.

Thank-you Santa, for sending me some exceptional literary and culinary delights.

I have now finished work for 2009. Even though I didn’t start work until April, it has been quite a long year, moving from being an immunology post-doc academia to a clinical epidemiologist in pharma. I am very glad that I made the change. I much prefer working in the team-based approach in pharma, with clearly defined operating procedures and deadlines. I am very lucky that I don’t have to attend too many pointless meetings, and I am mostly left to my own devices to just get the job done.

My colleagues have been warm and welcoming. There is no strong siblinghood of shared difficulty that I found during my PhD, but everyone is kind and friendly. I look forward to the cafeteria lunch, where the French chefs cook up a diverse range of treats. Usually I stick with a soup and fruit-salad, much to the puzzlement of my European colleagues who treat lunch as the main meal of the day. However, the chef put on a special holiday menu, so I couldn’t help treating myself to scampi and scallop skewers followed by a quatro of desserts – chocolate mousse, panna cotta, jam poffertje and profiterole.

After Saint Nicolas’ day, we returned to work to find that someone had placed a selection of mandarins, marzipan, chocolate, and speculoos on the desk of every single person in the building. Such a thoughtful gesture, and very nice to have a little sugar boost to help me through the afternoons.

Soon after that we had a small forest of fir trees spring up in the lobby. Each tree was a different species, their needles slightly different colours and textures. So much thicker than the ones we get over in Australia, but they still smell like the holidays. Often as I passed by I would stop and sniff the branches, ignoring the quizzical looks from the receptionists.

This year I have joined the Bloggers’ Holiday Book Swap. Thank you to Amanda, Amy, Ana, Chris, Debi, Eva, Jill and Lenore for organising this. I look forward to sending a little something to a fellow blogger, and it has also inspired me to finally start a list of my own favourite books. More book recommendations requested.