Thanksgiving Number One

On Saturday, Jack and I headed to Petersborough with Candice to join the Donnelly Family for Thanksgiving.  Troy was at work, so he missed out.  Candice is a very close family friend of the Donnelly's and spends most holidays with them.  Mrs Donnelly is about 86years old and had 10 children.  Of those 10 children, most of them had at least four children and so on and so on.   You can imagine how big of a family gathering it was.  Candice tells me that it was a relatively small Thanksgiving this year due to some relatives being overseas.  But OH MY GOD, to me it was gigantic!  There was probably at least fifty people! 

When we arrived, we enjoyed Mrs Donnelly's famous cabbage rolls, which are made with a spicy meat filling.  Divine - Mrs Donnelly said she will be happy to share the recipe with me, so I feel very special.   I also got to try pumpkin pie for the very first time.  It is a sweet pie made from canned pumpkin!  I am not kidding - CAN PUMPKIN.  It sounds weird but gosh it's yummy.  Mrs Donnelly makes hers with a little ginger which I really enjoyed.  We then headed out to see the Lift Locks which allows the boats to go from one higher lake to another lower lake.  They are the highest lift locks in the world at 19.8 metres!  It was such a sight to see, but unfortunately we didn't get to see a boat pass through the locks while we were there.  Petersborough is a lovely town with many lovely old homes and churches. 

I was very impressed to see some men in the kitchen helping with the cooking for Thanksgiving.  I guess when you cater for that many people, it's all hands on deck!   I was amazed to see a kind of 'disorganised chaos'.  Not one person seems to be in charge of everything - people all just pitch in and seem to know what to do and when to do it.  And there was waves of people all having a turn in the kitchen at one point or another.  I was able to help out a little and even rescued the cheese sauce from near disaster - Joe forgot to do the butter and flour at the start!

We had turkey and ham with all the vege's etc.  For dessert, there were about a million pies!  Blueberry, Raspberry, Pumpkin, apple etc etc.  So much to choose from.  It was absolutely beautiful!  Jack had a great time and enjoyed playing with all the kids.