It’s another time of the year again for all the Americans throughout the world to celebrate the Thanksgiving day today. I am wishing everybody a very Happy and wonderful celebration. May it maybe simple or lavish or fancy or whatever you and your family celebrated.
As for my family we will celebrate Thanksgiving the way the family of Bob were celebrating. I first celebrate with them 21 years ago. It was really an eye opener for me. As you know I came from a big family here in the Philippines and when they celebrate there it just Bob, me, Chris and his parents and his brother and his family. It was really intimate. I did enjoy it. It was the first time for Bob’s family to have rice included in the menu for thanksgiving or any occasion afterwards.
I did really study the way Bob’s family put the whole feast together. Me and Bob wanted to follow the tradition of his family so that we can pass it along to our children. As you know we moved from the States over 12 years ago. Our youngest son Jared was just barely 1 months old. Since he never saw the way we celebrated in the States, Bob and I made sure that he knows about a lot of the holidays in the States and how they are celebrated. Since the time he remembered, we did celebrate the Thanksgiving the way his grandmother in the States did. During our first year here we bought a live turkey from our neighbor. They found out from Jun my brother-in-law that we wanted a turkey, so they offered their turkey. I can’t remember how much we paid for the 2 turkey. I had Jun roast (lechon style) the turkey outside in our yard. When it was done, when tasted it was not the same as the Butterball or the Norbest turkey like in the States. It was tough. But it’s okay, we couldn’t get brand of turkey that we want. The other food that were prepared were good anyway.
After 2 years of living in GenSan, we then moved to Davao. A few years of celebrating Thanksgiving here in Davao we usually bought our pumpkin pie from the restaurant here. It cost a lot. I still bought yams in a can from the grocery store here. Even the croutons were still from the grocery stores.
The imported items before were not as wide of a varieties as now. Luckily overtime Gaisano Mall here in Davao stocked up more and more imported items over the years. Few items they had were yams in the can, white marshmallows, crouton’s and other Thanksgiving stuff. So I bought a few cans and it was good. At that time I didn’t make any pumpkin pie, I just bought different desserts then. Made mashed potato, Bob made the gravy. I am not into cooking at that time yet.
Until one Christmas Bob bought me a stove with built-in oven in it. I guess he is hinting for me to start cooking. :-). LOL. So I started to be the cook then. Lots of trial and error. Thank God for the internet, surfing the net was my safety blanket then. Ha ha ha. Really I am searching the net for the new recipes and substitution for the ingredients that I can’t find here. Still this day we still have more ingredients that so hard to find here. Bob really was the one encourages me to try to make the pumpkin pie out from the squash. I was so happy that he really showed confidence in me on everything I do especially the cooking. I don’t like cooking before. He really gave me the boost to do it. Now, I am so confident on how to cook and make something even using the substitute ingredients. I make everything now from scratched, from the stuffing’s I made my own sausage and croutons. Yams from the local sweet potato here in the Philippines. Pumpkin pie from the local squash from here.
Since we don’t have the off day of the kids on Thursday (the day of Thanksgiving, it’s not a holiday here), for a long time now we do our Thanksgiving on the Saturday, it’s just 2 days after the Thanksgiving day anyway. So Thanksgiving Day for us will be on Saturday the 24th. Which means a busy week for me and my niece Glenda preparing our food for Saturday Thanksgiving Day. New recipes to be added on our menu for Thanksgiving this year it will be a pumpkin shake. It will be replacing the eggnog. Bob and the kids like the pumpkin shakes better than the eggnog. So pumpkin shake it is.
I hope you guys have a good Thanksgiving Day with your family. Happy Eating.
Happy Turkey Day!!!
Happy Thanksgiving , to you and your family Bob , this will be my wifes first thanksgiving dinner , I`ll do the cooking !
Thank you Craig! Enjoy your Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to the Martin family.
Thank you so much Randy. Happy Thanksgiving to you and Amelyn as well.
As well, happy thanksgiving to you and your family, Feyma. I will be on the road early tomorrow to join my family in Virginia for the traditional feast, and hope to be there in time for the Redskins/Cowboys game. My wife is already there prepping the stuff tonight and will be doing the cooking tomorrow, as usual, while training the daughter-in-law. 🙂
Hi John Reyes – Thank you so much. Hope you and your family have a good celebration tomorrow there. Have fun watching the game. Have fun eating.
Happy Turkey Day again to you and family!
Happy Thanksgiving to you and Bob and your family 🙂
Same to you and your family too Pete.
Have fun eating the turkey and other food as well. 🙂
Have a good day!
Hi Feyma,
I’ve yet to try cooking a turkey in my oven in Cebu as everything is usually prepared on a rod turning over the coals!. I know I can get a Butterball turkey at S&R–could you please give us all some tips on how you cook yours, and for how long? My stove is a
La Germania, but the oven part hasn’t seen any use yet.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and all LIP writers and readers!
Queenie
Hi queeniebee – When you cooked your turkey before in the rotisserie did you put stuffing’s inside? We did ours before. Taste good too. We can get butterball or Norbest kind of turkey in a lot of the malls here. Just decide to do chicken this year, we can stuff other birds with different stuffing’s inside.
Gosh, I hate La Germania oven. So not reliable. You should use the thermometer because even if the turkey looks cook outside but inside it might still raw. I always check the temperature before taking out the turkey, chicken or pork from the rotisserie or oven. When cooking your turkey in the States before do you use a plastic bag that you put the turkey with the stuffing inside the bag before putting inside the oven? I learned that technique from my mother-in-law and the turkey really stays moist inside. I saw that kind of plastic bags at Gaisano mall here in Davao.
I’m so looking forward for the opening of the S&R here in the Davao. It might be early next year.
Hey, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. Have a good dinner.
Cheers!
I have an idea for cooking your turkey, deep fry. I have been deep frying turkeys for over 16 years, very easy to do and a lot quicker then in the oven. One thing is that you need a lot of cooking oil, but after the turkey is done strain the oil then you will have enough to last for a few months. You can find the info on the internet on how to cook them. The time to cook the turkey 3 1/2 mins for every pound, so a 10 pound turkey only takes 45 mins, that is after the oil has been heated to 350 F. If you have any question just let me know.
Well, We very much wanted to have a Turkey dinner here also, But when the market wanted $50.00 for a Turkey, we passed on that Idea..However we have been invited to some friends house who is having a Turkey Feast!!! So off we go, I am going to make some Macaroni Salad and Italian Ontay Pasta for desserts….Best wishes to everyone for a Happy Holiday…..
Hi Lenny – Yep turkey here cost an arm and a leg too. We decided to cook chicken this year. Its still good though.
Have fun with your dinner with your friends. Macaroni salad sounds good to me, I have to try that Italian Ontay pasta though. I haven’t taste that menu yet. Something to cook soon then.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and family too.
Have a good celebration!
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Bob and your family Feyma. Happy Thanksgiving to “LIP” readers everywhere.
Happy, Happy Thanksgiving to you too Bob. I appreciated your greetings to my family and our LIP Family too.
Have a wonderful day to you!
S&R has butterball turkey… there are also merchants in the saturday and sunday market here in makati that make thanksgiving tukey and pies.
Hi bel3ms – I don’t doubt that. I’m pretty sure they will have lots of them there. That’s also good to hear of what you just said about the merchant market there have some turkey and pies. That’s good for our readers here that don’t want to cook and wanted to eat that food, at least some place have it already ready for them to eat. But is it reasonable price though?
Thank you for the comment and sharing of your thoughts here. Highly appreciated.
Happy Thanksgiving Day to you!
Feyma: Happy Thanksgiving to you, Bob, and the kids…. I honestly completely forgot about today being Thanksgiving. Since it’s not really celebrated here, and we never really made it part of our household thing here, I totally forgot about it.
Hi John – I think it was different for you since you were always traveling and out of the country a lot. The time difference I’m sure can be grueling to you. I think for us since some of our kids that grow up in the States and saw how the Thanksgiving there, they expect the Thanksgiving to be celebrated every year for us. I guess I would want them to follow the tradition later. Just like they will follow some of the Filipino traditions too.
Anyway, Happy Holidays to you and Becka and cute Juanito.
Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours and to the entire “LiP” family!
Thank you so much Greg…
Happy Holidays to you!
Happy Thanksgiving Bob. And to Feyma and the kids
Thank you, Gerry! Happy thanksgiving to you and your family.
Gobble, gobble Bob Martin Happy thanks giving day (belated) to you and your family.
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Robert Bula, Susie Irasga Bula and all of the Bula’s!
Hey, you’re just infront of me hahaha.
Happy Thanksgiving all! It!s great that you are determined to celebrate, and experiment with local ingredients. Our feast has always been a mixed menu. The turkey is the centerpiece, but the sides are a mix of American, German, and Filipno foods.
Take care,
Pete
Mrs Feyma,
Hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving. All the food that you have posted on f/b sure looks good. Take care and stay safe
Hi Cordellero Cowboy – Thank you… To celebrate in both cultures would be great too. We did add some other Filipino food to our dishes too, the rice especially. ha ha ha.
Happy holidays to you and family!
HI PapaDuck – We did celebrate the Thanksgiving greatly with new found friends, our kids classmates and schoolmates. It was really fun and exciting. Don’t worry my next post would be the thanksgiving event here and with lots of photos…
Good to see you her as always PapaDuck.
Happy Holidays to you and family!
Thank you Bob for the greetings! Happy Thanksgiving to you Feyma and family too!
Thank you Susie! Take care!
happy thanks giving to my one and only honey ko…. papa duck and may the Gob
Bless you always….
Super like of what you said to your wife Papaduck. I hope she had the time to respond with your nice post here too. God bless you and your wife.
Take care!
Hi Feyma and Bob: Has been busy this week, just finished reading your post Anyway belated Happy Thanksgiving, better late than never. This year instead of cooking the turkey and the side dishes, we decided to order a pre-cooked Thanksgiving Dinner, good for 10 servings, since there are only 8 of us. My wife was ecstatic, since this was the first thanksgiving that she spent only two hours in the kitchen. This cost was only 59.99 and we will do this again, if our guests list is less than 10. Cheers!