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!