Our seventh Thanksgiving celebration since moving to the UAE, and our most Emirati version yet.

Yes, the actual holiday was yesterday, but I was pulling a desk shift in the office … and people in the UAE can’t be expected to know that the dinner should have gone on the day before.

When you’re out of the States, you figure out a way to make it work. The day and even the meal might need to be adjusted.

So, a meal for six in our apartment, and our four guests, each of them Emiratis, had never been to a Thanksgiving dinner. We were happy to give them our interpretation.

So, after starting with appetizers on the balcony on a balmy November night, we went with the basics.

–Twelve-pound turkey roasted upside-down — so the white meat stays more moist. Not some great breakthrough, but it works for us. The prep: compound butter (with garlic, salt and pepper) spread under the skin of the bird, as well as the outside. Also under the skin, slices of lemon. Cooked for three and a half hours in a bag, and maybe not as brown as some would prefer, but wonderfully moist.

–Two varieties of stuffing — one made alone, with mushrooms and apple slivers and celery added, and the other the old-fashioned way — assembled then cooked in the cavity of the bird. (And yes, we know some people consider that an invitation for food-poisoning.)

–Two types of cranberries. One from a can, one home-made, using fresh cranberries — boiled with sugar, with orange juice added, as well as orange slices. The canned version was sweeter. The other version was more fun.

–Mashed potatoes. Made from 14 red potatoes. The only aspects of the meal I was involved in. I’d never had mashed potatoes from red potatoes, and by the time I had mashed them and added butter and some milk, they were fairly glutinous — and not particularly popular at the table? Me? Or the red potatoes? (Wife says more butter!)

–Gravy. To me, the key ingredient to the successful Thanksgiving meal. It adds the savory to the spuds and makes the potentially dry elements, like stuffing and white meat, more easily consumed. We had lots and lots of gravy. (Running out is a disaster, in my mind.) From a New York Times recipe on “make ahead” gravy, including chicken stock and flour, with giblets and turkey drippings to finish it off.

–Green beans, organic, to provide some color to the meal, but not all that popular.

And for dessert, pumpkin pie,  brownies, and a coffee trifle that one of our guests brought.

Our Emirati friends zeroed in on the core of the meal — the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy and the cranberries. (My potatoes, alas, not a hit.)

They said they liked the meal, and they backed that up with what appeared to be hearty appetites.

As Americans, we perhaps did not fully appreciate the exotic-ness that turkey-stuffing-cranberries-gravy represents in this region.

And our guests — cosmopolitan, well-traveled, verging on “foodies” — seemed happy to sample this American melange of flavors, perhaps much in the same way that Americans appreciate an iftar meal here.

The fun of getting out and around: Experiences we might not otherwise enjoy.