Le Thanksgiving Parisien

While you all were off with your friends and families last Thursday, eating glorious, massive feasts, I was here in Paris, working, and eating pasta for dinner.  My wonderful feast day didn't arrive until Saturday, and what an anticipated day that was!  Aside from my friends and family visiting me here, this Thanksgiving was probably the most anticipated event during my time here.  Mainly because planning and preparations began in, ohhhh...September!  This event was mine and Ally's brain child, and everything from the preparations, to the cooking, to the prayer were handled by us.  Let me just say, I have loads of respect for anyone who has ever pulled off an entire Thanksgiving meal on their own because this was a tough job for even the two of us!  However, with it being the first time either of us has taken on Thanksgiving, we consider ourselves quite accomplished now. 

We began planning the menu, collecting ingredients, and researching where to get certain items about a month ago.  For Ally, it was finding her pickled beets and turkey bag, for me, finding pumpkin and some sort of pie crust.  Luckily, we were able to find nearly everything we needed, and managed to suffice without a few things.  Lucky for me, Ally handled the turkey all on her own, as in ordered it, picked it up (15 lbs!), stuffed it, seasoned it, cooked it, and didn't over/under cook it!  I call that a job well done!  On the menu for the night, besides the turkey, was stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, peas, and carrots.  And then for dessert we had a pumpkin pie, apple crumble pie, and carrot cake.  Ally handled the turkey, gravy, stuffing, peas, green beans, and carrot cake, I handled the sweet potato casserole and (with the help of Amanda) the pumpkin and apple crumble pies (which were 100% homemade, even the crust!), and then Ally and I together did the mashed potatoes and carrots.  It was quite a lot of work, but it made the meal THAT much better, having the satisfaction of making it all yourself. 

Friday after class, (after a pit stop at the Apple store to get the verdict on my computer that has been pooping out on me...it's OK, everyone, HUGE sigh of relief on my part!) Amanda and I made our way to her mansion (literally, a townhouse IN the city of Paris, unheard of) to bake the pies.  Her au family was in the UK for the weekend, which gave us free use of their amazing gourmet kitchen.  After preparing a lovely salmon, rice, and spinach lunch, with apple compote dessert, for ourselves, we proceeded to make the pies.  Pie crusts here are quite hard to come by, so we attempted to make our own.  A little flour, butter, and water later, we managed to have some pretty normal looking pie crusts!  Now the hard part was rolling them out and getting them into the pie tins (rather, tart dishes), but we managed, after a little piece work...  We were luckily able to find canned pumpkin, but we had to make our own seasoning for it, which meant grinding our own cloves and mixing nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, etc together with the pumpkin.  Pie #1 turned out to be fantastic!  Next up, the apple crumble pie, which originally wasn't on the menu, but a few days before I decided it just wasn't Thanksgiving without some sort of apple dessert, so the apple crumble pie it was!  This one was easy, just layer in the apple slices to the pie crust, top with cinnamon and sugar, and then spread mixture of oats, flour, brown sugar, and butter over the top!  Pie #2, huge success as well!  That night after picking the kids up from school, they had a friend come over, so they were able to settle on a movie, which essentially gave me the night off!  I used this time to make my sweet potato casserole, because Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving in my house without it!  Luckily, I was able to find marshmallows here (or, chamallows as they call them), which was the perfect topping for the casserole...and a nice treat for the kiddos as well! 

My sweet potato casserole!

Mine and Amanda's yummy pumpkin pie

And our killer apple crumble pie

Unfortunately this weekend we had 2 cousins visiting, 2 year old Armand and 3 year old Mathilde, which meant extra work for me!  So Saturday morning I was up bright and early to help Nico tend to the children while Valerie went off to do a live interview on the radio about the conflict in Korea in the last week.  While I couldn't understand much of what she said, from the sounds of it, and from what Nico said, she rocked it!  As soon as I was done working, I headed over to Ally's to help her prepare the food and set the table.  Lucky for me, when I got there she had just pulled out the turkey, so I got to help her carve it and take out the stuffing!  We then set off to peel 2497359735 billion potatoes, chop them, boil them, mash them (more like whip them...with a milkshake blender no less!), and sample them...soo good!  We then peeled and chopped the carrots and cooked them as well.  By the time we finished, it was time for me to head home and help Val get the kids ready and bring them over.  Nico had friends from the US visiting, so he went to grab a drink with them earlier and met us at Ally's later. 

Perfectly cooked, HUGE turkey

Ally mutilating her masterpiece

After dressing up the kids, we walked back to Ally's, did all the introductions (fyi, our au family's had never met), and then we fed the kiddos...7 of them!  They all loved the food and ended up eating way more than expected!  After they finished, we put them in different rooms with movies.  Lucien and Mahe (both 8) watching Harry Potter in Ally's room, Alice and Baptiste (both 5) watching the Great Mouse Detective in the parents room, and the 3 little ones, Armand, Mathilde, and Gustave (2 and 3 yrs old), partly watching a movie and partly destroying the boys' bedroom.  Once they were settled, the adults enjoyed a lovely champagne toast, and then retreated to the table to begin the feast!  Seated at the table were me, Val, Nico, Ally and her "au parents" Sam and Marie, and then our friends Amanda, Ellie, and Lauren.  We passed around our plates and loaded them with food.  There was no way I could go back for seconds, but I was quite happy to see both Sam and Nico grab seconds of EVERYTHING, they really liked it all!  Nico also was raving about my sweet potato casserole, let's just say he was quite happy that those were OUR leftovers to bring home!  After dinner, we brought out the desserts, and somehow we all managed to try one of all 3 desserts (very small pieces, but it was an accomplishment!  Everyone loved the pies (including myself), even Sam and Ally who are not at all pumpkin pie fans said they really liked it!  Oh and I forgot to mention, we obviously paired our dinner with wine of course, and it was probably the best wine I have ever had/will ever have in my life.  I'm not even a huge red wine fan, but this was truly incredible!!  After chatting and eating (and chatting and eating) we finally called it a night around 11:30 pm.  We cleaned up, bundled up, loaded up the kids, and set home in the frigid icy temperatures.  Nico and Val thanked me over and over for including them in on the occasion, and cooking, and introducing them to Marie and Sam (who they totally hit it off with by the way)!  So I would say all in all, it was quite the successful night.  Not to mention ridiculously fun to have all the people I love (in this country) at the table with me. 

The kiddy table!

Alice (with a smile AND a mouthful of peas...WHAAAT?)

Lu Lu and his peace sign

Amanda and I

Yummm Champagne!

Beautiful set table

Lauren, Ellie, Ally, me, Amanda

SO GOOD!

Ally's cutie Gustave blowing out the candle

Of course it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without the leftovers, so yesterday Ally and I reconvened to solve the leftover problem.  First we made ourselves Thanksgiving monte cristo's, with cranberry sauce, camembert cheese, turkey, and sweet potato casserole, all grilled on bread in a pan...sooo good!  Then we took the leftover carcass and made a HUGE pot of turkey soup with all the fixings inside.  Lucky me I got to take some home with me, but it wasn't enough, because Val, Nico, and I finished it off for dinner last night!  So the conclusion is that we are doing Thanksgiving again...maybe for Easter?