Gosh, how I love Thanksgiving. It’s a food-binge kind of holiday: turkey with all the trimmings shared with family and friends. But Thanksgiving in Singapore hasn’t always proven easy. As an American, prepping for the day has always been second nature, so our first year here was a bit of a shock. Our Singapore kitchen was completely outdoors and I was not used to the heat. I was melting while cooking for all our friends. Worse yet, the turkey barely fit in the oven.
For a wee while there, I was freaking out, worried I had a houseful of guests arriving and we’d have no main attraction. Luckily, I got a little creative with the oven and the turkey got roasted. But so did I. My sweat-laden brow with hair stuck to it was not the picture of a gracious hostess I wanted.
Yup, cooking Thanksgiving dinner (and Christmas, too) in Singapore can be a challenge – and not just in the kitchen. Half the time, I can’t find the ingredients I want and I end up shuffling from store to store. But no more. When I learned about RedMart’s holiday ready-to-eat line, I truly did a little Snoopy Dance. Seriously. I danced.
Delivering tradition
RedMart will deliver a Rosemary-Infused Roast Turkey ready to pop into the oven straight to your house. Easy. No carting home a frozen turkey and trying to fit it in the freezer or picking one up cooked somewhere else and schlepping it in a taxi.
Plus, they have all sorts of traditional sides to go with it. Luxury Spiced Cranberry Sauce? Got it. Roasted Root Vegetables. Yup. Sage and Onion Stuffing and Potato Gratin. Check and double check. Delicious Classic Turkey Gravy? You bet! They deliver straight to your door, traditional flavours without all the work.
And you know what? It’s tasty. RedMart delivered all of the above to our office so we could check it out. The flock of us descended on the table and gobbled it up. The turkey had a really nice flavour as did the stuffing, and even the gravy was good (gravy can be tricky!). But our hands-down favourite was the cranberry sauce. Yum!
Not only that, but RedMart has all these great new items that will actually make your Thanksgiving – dare I say it – healthier. Cauliflower Rice, Zucchini Noodles, Pumpkin Noodles or even Beetroot Noodles can all be ordered. Each has a traditional Thanksgiving flavour, just cooked in a less artery-clogging way. Brilliant.
And they even have a pretty decent collection of wine.
Everything you need
Of course, they don’t have all of my grandmother’s recipes. I mean, how will they ever make a pecan pie like she did? But what they do have is Private Label pecans, sugar and flour. What’s Private Label? It’s RedMart’s own label, all of it sustainable and competitively priced. When I order from RedMart, I don’t have to walk around in the grocery store with my palm oil app, trying to figure out if I’m buying something that will kill the planet.
Because here’s the thing: RedMart has a whole range of fresh vegetables coming directly from farms in Cameron Highlands, generally reaching them within 24 hours of being harvested. Palm oil used in Private Label cleaning products is all sustainable. Milk is imported straight from a state-of-the art facility in Australia. The chicken is all cage free, and the beef is from grass-fed cows, naturally raised. Paper products are all FSC-certified, which means I can use as many as I want to pat down my turkey.
The list of “good-for-the-planet” products goes on and on. So does the variety. Once Thanksgiving has been and gone, when I’m too lazy to cook again for a while, I can also order all sorts of other ready-to-eat foods such as Butter Chicken, Shepherd’s Pie and Lasagne.
See? Feasting for the holidays suddenly just got a whole lot simpler. Care to join me in the Snoopy Dance?
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