My dad and step-mom live in Australia. They have been in Canada visiting for the summer but are heading back home in a couple days. It has been a long time since we were together in crisp autumn weather so I wanted to have an early Thanksgiving celebration with them before they left.

Turkeys in Australia are not cheap and Thanksgiving is not an Australian holiday, not to mention that having your oven on for 5+ hours in Australian heat is probably a bad idea. I got us an organically raised turkey from a local farm, heaps of veggie side dishes and lots of good wine. The smells coming from the kitchen are intoxicating. I perfect way to spend a cool fall day.

One of my favourite salads is a kale salad with tahini garlic dressing and pomegranate seeds. I posted this recipe months ago and make it fairly often. The creamy dressing offsets the tart pomegranate seeds perfectly. This salad can be prepped the day before too  (it’s actually better that way so the kale will soften up) which gives you more time to relax while your turkey is roasting.

In all the activity I forgot to take a photograph of this salad..or my beautiful turkey. The turkey recipe was adapted from a few sources (Martha Stewart for the brining recipe and Jamie Oliver for the oven temps). It was moist and delicious and only took 5 1/2 hours to cook an 8kg turkey which is pretty awesome.