We all know and love the Thanksgiving story of the Pilgrims and the Indians. This however is another story. It is the story of a bunch of crazy Americans trying to make a "traditional" meal in a foreign land. You might think that it would be easy to recreate a meal in France since after all the French are known for their cuisine...well, they are known for THEIR cuisine. OURS took several chefs, stores and adaptations to be complete. The first problem was the teeny tiny cooking facilities. Our oven is about the size of a toaster and it only has one shelf. Our microwave is even that much smaller. Voila! We found a way to adapt.
Two weeks ago Taylor and I ventured down to our local marche on Saturday morning to talk with the Rôtissoire (man who sells rotisserie meats). We ordered four turkeys. He said they were small and would be difficult to find, but he would check around. The next Saturday we checked in and everything was in order. Thanksgiving day Taylor drove 30 minutes to a marche where the Rôtissoire was working so he could pick up the turkeys. Voila! And you thought it was a project to carve ONE turkey! Try four!
It was a hungry crowd for dinner and a good thing too.
Each chef spend lots of time and effort. Tifiny and Janene (Tif's mom) hand whipped cream-no electric mixer, sent Ralph (Tif's dad) on a wild goose hunt for sweet potatoes-the first ones he found were the size of an egg, made banana cream pie in square casserole dishes (no pie tins) and made a giant bowl of mashed potatoes & gravy. Traci Thomas made pumpkin pie with canned pumpkin that she bought at the British bookstore. The small can of Libbys pumpkin was a whopping 6Euros a can! Lisa Frank supplied baguettes-none of us were crazy enough to make homemade rolls! Hillary brought 5 little tiny jars of cranberry sauce that she miraculously found in the "International Section" of the grocery store. I tried to create Grammie Randall's stuffing using three different varieties of "French bread". I went to the market to buy sage and came home with "Estragen". When I told Taylor all I could find was estragen he said we all might feel emotional after the meal! I looked up estragen in the dictionary to find I had purchased tarragon. Tif was brave enough to call her French neighbor who had fresh sage - thank goodness! We fed 22 people: 11 adults and 15 children. We had all the "fixins" plus a few French specialties like foi grass, pate and chocolate mousse cake.
There were three big tables set up. This little group of gobblers had the most fun running around.
Everyone had a friend to share the evening with. Spencer's friend Arthur came. He is French, but lived in the US several years ago and has good memories of American Thanksgiving. We were glad he could join us. After dinner the kids had a big game of bingo complete with prizes. We stuffed ourselves with dessert and ended the evening satisfied to say the least.
No left-overs for us. We pretty much cleaned up on the meal & it was delicious! Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
