Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Just in time for Christmas, I bring you Thanksgiving!

Yep, I'm a little slow on the uptake. I've been meaning to blog this forever, but I just kept getting sidetracked. You'd think I'd be a bit more excited to talk about it since it was in fact my FIRST Thanksgiving dinner in five years. Thanksgiving is the one American holiday that I simply can do without. And as soon as I moved to France I dropped it like a brick. Besides the food, there isn't much of anything that I find particularly special about it. I loath the whole Pilgrims and Indians mythology and I much prefer Christmas because you get to stuff your face and people give you stuff!

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But when my California Ex-Pat friend Heidi proposed that I invite people over to her place and she would cook us a whole traditional American Thanksgiving meal, I immediately said yes for two reasons: One, I never turn down free food, and two, she is an AMAZING cook. She's the kind of foodie that loves to cook and that makes food so yummy that I've taken to inviting myself to stop by her apartment on my way to ___________ (fill blank with any random excuse that will get you in the door) because I know there will probably be fresh baked treats of some sort popping out of the oven the very moment I arrive. I heart Heidi. If she ever moves back across the pond I will shed many a tear, and NO, not just because she'll be taking her cookies with her. But anyway...

The guest list included: one Aussie, one Greek, two Americans, and 5 Frogs, and about 8 bottles of Pinot Noir.


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Everyone that wasn't American was incredibly excited to be invited to a real live American Thanksgiving. For most of their adult lives they had witnessed this mysterious holiday over and over again through Hollywood movies and they were all excited too have been invited to eat some Thanksgiving turkey.

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The turkey of course had to be special ordered from the butcher well in advance because you have about a snowball's chance in hell of finding a turkey in a grocery store or butcher in this region of France. (Frogs don't eat Turkeys.) But Heidi saved the day by planning ahead, and thus we had had turkey for dinner and not a chapon.

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Needless to say, everything Heidi made was wooooonderful.

Sorry there aren't more photos.

I was too busy eating.

6 comments:

Justin said...

Well it is good to see you all had fun!

Shanster said...

Oh man, Thanksgiving is my personal favorite holiday. Just cuz ANY day centered around EATING is MY sorta day. I don't do anything around pilgrims or football - we just eat all day long.

Looks like your dinner was stupendous!!!

Christmas - eh - buying all those presents and feeling indebted to Christmas card lists and who bought what and how much they spent etc. Guess I am a big ol' bah humbug.

Tho' I love, love, love Christmas lights! I think people should leave them up all the time!!

kwerekwere said...

you know, i don't think i have *ever* done thanksgiving dinner since i moved out of my mother's house, and even then we really didn't do it that much.

i think one year we had burgers and fries, and it was right after we moved back to america when i was like 9 or something.

i'm really glad my mom was never into holidays with me while i was growing up. it's easier to deal/cope without them.

case in point: i'm in a hotel room in lesotho typing this post, and i'll be here all week.

Cherise said...

haha, kind of reminded me of one of my first big Thanksgiving parties. I was the only American of ~18 people, 20 bottles of wine, 1 case of Guiness, and a couple bottles of single malt. Ahhh, those were the days.

I love Thanksgiving, since the idea of cooking all day and sharing food with friends is my ideal holiday :) Not so into the presents thing...

Looks like it was a tremendous meal and great fun. I'm jealous! All our friends were away this year so it was just the 3 of us.

Madame K said...

Yeah, I guess the cool part about Thanksgiving is not havign to buy gifts---which I loath as well. More on that later...

Aaron Grunwald said...

I heart your food photos.