Doug and Paisley in SWAZILAND: Thanksgiving

It's hard to believe that we just celebrated our second Thanksgiving in Swaziland (but, we did!). And just like last year, our friends Michelle, Stephanie and Erin opened up their homes to the droves of Americans in our expatriate community. Michelle, Stephanie and Erin live in neighboring apartments; which makes it convenient to cook with two, neighboring kitchens. Last year, Jason (of Jason and Fiona - PAC Doctor) and I cooked 3 turkeys and one 'turducken.' But, if the truth be told (one year later), Jason really cooked 3 turkeys and one 'turducken' and I ran around after him in the kitchen trying to help, but really just cleaning up. This year, with Jason and Fiona living back in California, I was nominated to cook the turkeys. Gasp. I'd actually never cooked a turkey before...I mean, it is a pretty grown-up exercise and with Liz Dillon around, there's really never been any need for me to take on this task. So, let the record show that 2010 was the year that I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey. And, I cooked FOUR of them.

Despite a couple of frantic Skype calls to my 93 year old grandmother in Florida (where my parents were celebrating the holiday), everything went smoothly. I made all of the stuffing on Wednesday; which left Thursday for turkey preparations. My mom taught me well, because everything turned out dillylish (Beth, that was for you). Thank goodness.

We approximated that 75 people came together for our Swazi Thanksgiving celebration! The four birds went a long way.

Here are a few shots from my cooking extravaganza. Let's pretend this is a cooking show.

The key to good gravy is roasting vegetables in the turkey juices so that when it comes time to use the drippings as your gravy base, the drippings are extra flavorful.

You can easily make homemade chicken stock with the neck, giblets and any leftover celery and onion you have from the stuffing preparations

Here was my turkey prep station including butter, salt/pepper and fresh rosemary and thyme. The string was used to tie-up the legs so that the bird held together.

The herbs went underneath the skin and then I rubbed the turkey with butter and salt/pepper. In my case, I repeated this step four times!

If your oven doesn't close, just grab a chair to keep it closed!

Then you're done. Well, actually, if you live at altitude then you are done a WHOLE lot quicker. Forget the '20 minutes per pound' crap. Seriously, if it weren't for the meat thermometer 4 footballs would have been served. Without a doubt.

Yes, I am posing with my first turkey