28 November 2012 / leggypeggy

Celebrating Thanksgiving in Patagonia

Chile, Food and drink, Patagonia, South America, Thanksgiving

Rael and Lauren keep an eye on the huge fire bed where turkey stew is cooking.

No doubt about it, Thanksgiving is my favourite US holiday—because it’s about sharing food with friends and family.

Every few years, I throw a Thanksgiving shindig in Australia. The invitation list is always pretty much the same, and guests are asked to bring their signature dish. I’m not talking about their prettiest plate, but what they put on it. Then I roast a couple of turkeys and legs of lamb, bake at least four pumpkin and pecan pies, and make anything else I think might be missing.

There’s some history relating to signature dishes. When strawberry-tart maker moved back to the UK, she ‘left’ her recipe to another Thanksgiving regular. One year when I called to invite the pavlova makers, and they asked if the mud cakes were coming. Invitees are very serious about the menu!

That said, we’ve been travelling extensively since 2009, so I’ve neglected Thanksgiving for the last few years and I expected to do the same this year.

Heck, we’re on an overland truck trip in South America, and this Thanksgiving we camped on a remote farm in Patagonia in the south of Chile.

On Thanksgiving Day, we stopped in a small town—Puerto Natales—on the way to the farm so our cook groups could buy ingredients for three days worth of dinners and breakfasts. We were to cook first. I bought the makings for chicken stir-fry—but our meat was frozen solid, so the next group said they’d cook instead.

They’d bought everything they needed for a chicken stew—a great choice because the weather was cold and they’d be cooking over wood fires.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when they opened the meat to discover they’d bought was nice big slices of turkey leg—osso bucco pavo. Things like this happen when no one in the cook group can read Spanish!

So we had turkey stew (with plenty of vegetables) and mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving and a sit-down meal to boot—a rare event when you usually camp and cook outdoors over an open fire.