Ode to the Pilgrims

We interrupt our previous program (the mystery of the missing phone) to give you this breaking news: We celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend! It must interrupt our Paris posts because it would just be ridiculous to write about Thanksgiving in December.

At the beginning of our friendship with Thomas and Marie-Lorraine (our two friends here in Chaumont), we told them that we should all celebrate Thanksgiving together.  So, the time finally came and we started thinking about what we could make and how we could find everything here in France.  The previous Saturday at the market, we saw what looked like a pumpkin, but was a bit smaller.  We decided to buy it and see if we could find a way to make a pie out of it.  That week, we began thinking about the menu. What should we cook?  How to make it homemade?  How to make a Thanksgiving meal with only two cooks?

After much deliberation and recipe-researching, we finally came up with the following menu:

Appetizer:
Pam's Taco Dip (as we named it)


Main Course:
Turkey (or chicken)
Rolls
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole

And for Dessert:
Pumpkin Pie
Pecan Pie

The toughest part was figuring all that out, but the second toughest part was going shopping.  The day before our meal, which would take place on Friday, we went shopping during our lunch break.  This was also quite difficult, because ingredients that may seem basic to you such as "baking soda," "evaporated milk," "brown sugar," and others, are just nonexistent or very camouflaged in French supermarkets.  But most of all, we did not find a turkey.  We should have gone to a butcher to double check, but you know us, always waiting until the last minute!  So, since Casino only had turkey slices for sandwiches, we decided we should probably just stick with a chicken.  That night, we prepared the taco dip so that we could get straight to work in the morning.

"Kiri" is the cream cheese we used.  They don't have a lot of cream cheese options in France, so we chose this one because we knew of it.  There were 24 individually wrapped packets inside, and we unwrapped about 16 for the dip.

The finished product!  Kind of a boring picture because there's too much white in our kitchen...

Finally, the day of the Thanksgiving meal arrived (Friday).  We woke up nice and early (around 9:30) to get a head start on cooking.  Derek started the dough for the rolls while Brittany took a shower.  We then took a brief break for breakfast, because we knew we had a big day ahead of us.  Derek continued to work on the bread while Brittany began operating on the pumpkin.

The pumpkin, sliced and gutted.

Luckily, back-up was soon to arrive.  Thomas would be spending the day with us to help cook, and Marie was going to come later on in the afternoon due to a job interview.  Not only was Thomas another helping hand, but he also brought some much-needed materials which our poorly stocked kitchen lacks: a real cutting board, real knives, a puréer (if I may), a potato masher, and more.  After we cooked and peeled the pumpkins, Thomas did most of the tough work in mashing and puréeing the pumpkins.

Meanwhile, Derek was working hard on kneading the dough to prepare it to rise again (although we don't have proper documentation because we're terrible at taking pictures, we swear it was happening).  We also started the pecan pie at this time.  We had cut and toasted the pecans the day before, so really all we had to do was make the filling.  We had finally found a recipe that did not contain corn syrup (which we did not want to use and probably couldn't have found in France even if we did want to use it), and basically made a mixture of sugar and butter.  We also threw some chocolate chips on there as well (because, why not?).  We used pre-prepared pie crusts to save time, but Casino pretty much only offered flaky or non-flaky crusts that are for tarts or quiches.  So, not exactly what we wanted, but, when in France...

Next, Brittany had to leave to go teach for two hours.  Yuck.  But thankfully, Derek and Thomas would be working hard to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour in her absence...or would they? (She discovered later that they really were just playing games the whole time.)  Upon returning, she found that they had cooked...and cooked...and cooked...and cooked...the pies until they were ready.  Apparently our oven is crappy.  Not to mention there are pictures and the numbers 1-9 on the oven dials that we don't quite understand, which makes an instruction such as "Bake for 40 minutes at 325 degrees" difficult to follow properly.

So, it was 17:00 and we were left with the green bean casserole, the mashed potatoes, and the chicken.  Marie arrived shortly after and we all got to work rinsing, chopping, and stirring.  We also put the chicken in the oven, and prepared the rolls for their baking.  By preparing, I mean making 2 1/2 inch circles, dipping them in butter, and folding them to look like little Pacmans. Somewhere between 17:00 and 20:00 we finished baking the bread, cooking the chicken, creating homemade cream of mushroom soup, frying onions, assembling and baking the green bean casserole, and had dinner on the table (a little later than planned).  The good news is that we're in France, and so it's totally normal to eat dinner at 20:00 and finish at midnight.
**(We apologize for the fact that the picture here really doesn't give you any idea about what the prepared items looked like).

We were all pretty tired when we sat down to eat, but the work was worth it!  Everything was absolutely delicious.  We took a break before dessert and taught our friends how to play "Apples to Apples."  After a few rounds (approximately 22:00 or so), we decided we should probably have dessert.

Ok, so the consistency of the pumpkin pie was a little off, but the flavor was AWESOME!  The pecan pie was a bit runny, probably due to the lack of poison (a.k.a corn syrup) to hold it together.  But throw a little crème fouettée (French whipped cream, which is kind of weird) on there and you're good to go. At 11 o'clock, we were all getting pretty sleepy because of the tryptophan in the turkey, oh wait...Maybe it was just because it was 11 o'clock at night and we had been cooking all day...Either way, we decided to call it a night.

Thanksgiving in France: different, slightly difficult, but definitely doable!  We sure missed being with our families this year, but we are so thankful we have people to call friends here that could share the day with us!

Oh yeah, one more thing.  We performed the following poem for our friends as well, in honor of all the Samples out there:

Mr. Turk was up this mornin'

Eatin' like a glutton

His crrrraawww so full of yella' corn

It stuck out like a button.

"Stuff old bird, I'm watchin' you!

'Cause as sure as you're livin',

I'll do some stuffin' too,

Along about Thanksgivin'. "

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Paris during Toussaint (All Saints' Day): Procrastination

Okay! Here is what you have all been waiting for! A day by day account of our trip to/in Paris! Since some of us (I'm not going to mention any names here) are too busy lesson planning to write a post on Paris, I have decided to pick up the slack so that all of our avid readers will be filled with the joy of our news.

Day 1: We are never on time
Our journey began on Monday 24 October, but we had actually spent the last two days (skipping church included) trying to plan this blasted adventure. Note to self: Never, ever, wait until two days before leaving for vacation to try to plan it, especially not a vacation to Paris (unless you are going to Paris, TX, in which case you don't need to plan anything at all). It could probably go unmentioned that we were up late on Sunday night packing and whatnot, so we decided to skip the early train (around 10:30) and take the next one (12:30). Because we were going to be taking a big suitcase, we wanted to catch the bus to the Gare. Well, thank you public transportation, the only bus options would either put us at the Gare at 12:26, or at 11:20. Knowing we needed more than four minutes to buy our tickets (again a problem of not preparing ahead) we were forced to take the bus that would make us sit at the tiny Gare for one long hour.

Good news and bad news. Good news first. We actually did not have to wait at the Gare for more than 15 minutes. Bad news. We didn't have to wait long because we missed the bus and had to walk to the Gare. Luckily it was freezing outside so by the time we got to the Gare we were only sweating a little bit (and by we I mean Derek because he was being so sweet to carry the huge suitcase all the way).

How much did the train tickets cost? How was the train ride?  These are two very good questions to which I no longer remember the answer. My next memory of the trip is watching (and laughing to myself) while Derek struggled to carry the suitcase up and down all the steps in the metro stations just to get to the hotel and realize he would have to carry it up four flights of stairs.

Poor chap. Once we checked into the hotel, freshened up a bit, and saw that our hotel was not half as bad and nasty as we had been expecting, we headed out to visit the tourist office and find dinner!  At the tourist office, we picked up loads of brochures (mostly for events that we were too poor to attend but looked cool) and bought two 4-day museum passes which would get us into many museums, etc. for free.  It was also on this night that we discovered it is both a blessing and a curse that restaurants are required to post their menu outside. It is a blessing because you can choose a place that has decent options and not be caught off guard. It is a curse because it is quite possible that we are the slowest decision makers on earth. So we spent at least an hour checking out the menus/trying to decide on a place to eat, and an equal amount of time eating/waiting for the waiter to bring us the check. But THEN we made one of the quickest and easiest decisions we have ever made:

  

Compared to Chaumont (which has two super crappy theaters owned by the same guy and which we've never been to), Paris is like the movie theater capital of the world.  Actually, compared to anywhere it is.  There are movie theaters EVERYWHERE.  But since we just happened to be by this particular one, we decided to go there.  It was sort of a combination between old-timey classy with red carpets and relatively crappy.  But, we did get some M&Ms so it was okay (popcorn can be hard to come by in French theaters, oddly enough). For the record, this was a GREAT movie. I don't think it is in America, though. But you should request it at the local theater! After the movie, we returned to the hotel. As Derek was about to set the alarm on his phone for the next morning, he realized that he did not have it. Where could it be? Probably at the movie theater...

Chaumont: The Land of Dreamers

We are back in Chaumont! Which means, we are back to the blog and to uploading more pictures! We were in Paris for the past week, but we will get to that in the next post. For now, we shall return to where we left off.

Once we returned from Reims, we started at our schools the very next day. For the rest of the week, we met (most of) the classes that we will be teaching. The following two weeks we were actually in the classroom with our students. Derek has a room at the school where he meets with his students, usually about 10, sometimes more sometimes less. Brittany, however, is sometimes teaching by herself but is often teaching alongside the teacher.

The English lessons are difficult to plan because each class is at a different level, and each student in each class is at a different level. Because of this, Derek plans one lesson and uses it for every class despite their differences, and Brittany adapts her lessons for each class.

Derek works twelve hours each week. Brittany works 10 hours on "A" weeks and 14 hours on "B" weeks. Understandably, we are much happier during "A" weeks. Although 12 hours does not seem like a lot of time per week, there's also the time that we use to plan the lessons (well, the time Brittany spends planning, anyways). Lesson planning is our lot as teachers, so it is nice to have only 12 hours of classes a week compared to the 30-35 hours of classes the real teachers have. As for Derek, he spends his extra time on the bus. The bus ride itself is not very long, but it is about a 10 minute walk to the bus stop from our apartment, and he usually has to leave about an hour early. On the days when his schedule is split between the morning and afternoon, he is traveling for about 2-3 hours a day when the school is less than a 10 minute drive from our apartment. Welcome to the life of public transportation.

That's enough about work! After all, it's not the real reason we are in France! On our first Sunday in town we woke up and went to church. In France, they are very skeptical about protestant churches, so (we think) the "approved church" is called the Église Reformé de France (The reformed church of France). Anyways, in each town, the ERF meets at the Temple (it's not really a temple, but it is called the temple). So we show up and guess who we meet?! A young french couple that just spent three years in Montreal with a community that explores the question "What is the church". Also, they love Settlers of Catan (Last friday we were up till three playing with Thomas). The husband is a funny guy and the wife is super sweet. Basically, they are easy to get along with, they are really similar to us, they have the same interests as us (environmentalism, eating seasonally, etc.), and they, too, are stuck in Chaumont for about nine months. Thomas was stationed here because he is working as a missionary, kinda. All in all, we are incredibly lucky to have them and are really excited to get to know them better.

At Brit's school, there is a young French teacher who is dating an American who used to be an assistant in Chaumont. For about three weeks we have been planning to get coffee with her, because she is really nice and easy to talk to, but just haven't done it. BUT, she and her boyfriend took us to the market in Chaumont which is awesome! It's not huge, but it's about 4 times bigger than the Searcy market AND they have cheese :-D

And there is one more friend we made (that's four and counting!)... Another teacher at Brit's school, who is probably in her forties with two children, has been very welcoming and friendly.  One Sunday, she invited us over to have lunch with her and her kids.  It was all in French, so it was kind of difficult to follow the conversation at times (French young people are so hard to understand!), but she treated us to a full-fledged French meal.  We started with the "apératif," which can be any sort of alcoholic drink/cocktail-type thing, and then came the "hors-d'oeuvres," just chips and nuts in this case.  After we finished the apératif, we accepted the wine she offered to go with our meal (although that much alcohol for a Sunday lunch was a little hard to handle, we didn't want to be rude!) We then had a salad, complete with raw meat on it (probably ham)--French people love their raw meats on salads!  Next were the potatoes "au gratin" which were AMAZING, accompanied with a beautiful meat creation that we can't remember exactly.  It was some kind of meat wrapped in another kind of meat and held together by a string...and DELICIOUS!  She then served the traditional "fromage" platter with several cheese options along with bread.  And finally, "café" with the dessert of an apple tart.  Needless to say, we didn't eat any dinner that night!

Another exciting thing we did: the Theatre! Well, not the real theatre. There is an amateur theatre group which performs in Chaumont a few times a year and we were lucky enough to see their 30 year anniversary show. Unfortunately, this show was written specifically for the occasion and the only things we understood were the swearing and the sexual innuendos. I'm sure there was a plot, but we missed it. Oh yes, the best part about the show was to see Derek's supervising teacher (the president of the amateur theatre group) on stage wearing tighty-whities, and only tighty-whities.

Outside of working, making a few friends, and attending really great theatre, there is only one thing left to do in Chaumont: Eat! We plan to experiment/expand our cooking style/repertoire while in France. 

Okay, okay. With these chocolate-chip pancakes, we did not really experiment (although we did invent our own baking powder), but sometimes you just gotta have a little taste from home, ya know? But this second picture, it was DA BOMB DOT COM! Seriously, it may have not tasted anything like French Cordon Bleu, but it was absolutely fantastic, and we will be making it again. Can you imagine Emmantal cheese and ham wrapped in chicken breast, breaded, fried and smothered with a delicious white wine sauce? I can, and that is why we will cook this next one on a regular basis!

So that is what we have been doing for the past month. Tune in next time to read about our trip to Paris!

Okay, one last thing before I let you get back to something hopefully more interesting than this blog post that is way too long: Derek is officially addicted to a Japanese comic book series called Fullmetal Alchemist, which he reads in French. (And Brittany is stuck trying to decode Molière's "Le Tartuffe," which is not going very well...)