The turkey is ordered for Christmas dinner!

MsE woke up early Monday morning and I was all out of coffee. I had drank it all on our Helper's day off, and I'm not a fan of the packages of coffee they sell in the 24 hour convenience store inside our housing complex.

I left 2 sleeping girls in the care of our Helper, while MsE and I headed out for french toast and kopi (Singapore's coffee). It was fun walking Jonathan to the MRT on his way to work.

MsE remembered to bring along the syrup. None of the coffee shops supply syrup with the french toast. We don't actually bring maple syrup. We bring liquid cane sugar, because it tastes similar for a fraction of the price. I think it's $5 a bottle. A regular sized (and rather small sized) bottle of maple syrup is $20 here. Another reason we bring cane sugar is that it is certified as Halal (meets Islamic dietary rules). Most of the Food Courts ask you not to bring in any outside food because they are Halal. Although frankly, pure maple syrup doesn't have any pork bi-products, so I don't know how bad bringing syrup into the food courts really would be.

After our breakfast I went to the grocery store for the first time in a month. Wow a whole month; having a Helper to do the shopping IS totally amazing. With only one kid in tow, grocery shopping was actually painless. We picked up kopi, some fruit and some frozen pre-made food to try for our dinner (dumplings and satay). Our Helper paired it with some lovely homemade fried rice.

While I was in the store, I laid hands on the Christmas Deli Flyer and it was advertising turkeys.

• But not fresh or frozen turkey...
• Cooked! Whole cooked roast turkeys.
• Pre-chilled and ready to be reheated for your Christmas Feast turkeys.
• Complete with stuffing and cranberry sauce turkeys.

So apparently this is a real thing here: Cooked turkey. The grocery store cooks it. You pick it up the day required after noon and you reheat it and carve it yourself. You can order other pre-cooked festive items: large roast hams, sausages, roast chickens, .... Apparently it's good to pre-order early as places do sell out.

Our Helper ordered and pre-paid for one for us the next day. $66 for a 12 to 16 lb turkey. She's been a Helper for 20 years in Singapore, and she says she hadn't done this before. She waited a very long time at the store for the guy who knew how to arrange the order.

Some of the restaurants in Singapore also do these cooked turkeys and you can order all the usual sides to pick up along with your turkey. With our list of food allergies, we'll just make our own sides at home.

I've already printed off recipes for side dishes to go along with our turkey dinner. That's me planning ahead almost 4 weeks out. I feel so prepared. It's making me feel like I may actually be able to pull off the weekly meal planning that the other Housewives-with-Helpers around here all do.

Interestingly enough, it's almost American Thanksgiving and I come across frozen turkeys in another grocery store. There were absolutely none around at Canadian Thanksgiving. But to be fair I've only come across 2 other Canadian families in 5 months in Singapore, where as I've met many American ones.

Also upon closer inspection, a whole turkey was pretty unlikely to have fit in our tiny oven. I had to get rid of all my cookie sheets, because they were way way too big. Looking at the prices for the frozen turkeys at the other store, I'm actually getting my cooked one for the same price as frozen and it includes stuffing.

Cheers to pre-cooked turkey!