THANKSGIVING

So there was this small occurrence of the classic American holiday Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is actually my most favorite holiday, and I was afraid I would be very homesick and sad to miss spending it with my family. Consequently, I had decided I wanted to do my best to recreate it, at least for me and my roommates. Then the guest list started slowly but surely to expand. Naturally I wanted all the American expats to share in the festivities. Boyfriends and girlfriends of roomies and expats were invited, and from there it was a short leap to close friends of all nationalities. Then we wanted to invite our neighbors who had invited us to dinner awhile ago, and guests started asking if they could bring their roommates, or significant others, or close friends, or cousins of their father-in-law's best friend's grandchildren. Everyone was very intrigued by this exclusively American event, and we wanted everyone to experience its glory. So eventually we realized we couldn't host this thing in our kitchen anymore, so we reserved a room on campus, and when 40 some odd people showed up, it proved to have been very wise.

So I had said I would do the turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce and maybe a pie or two with help from my roomies. So as I realized the scope of the guest list, I started wondering about how I was going to procure, stuff and cook a whole turkey of any decent size in my microwave oven. My French friend Justine said we could use hers (she has a real apartment, and thus a real kitchen), and helped me wander around some neighborhood butcher shops asking about ordering a whole turkey (not a very French thing to do). So we found the most adorable classical French butcher shop, complete with little old women in fur coats ordering tripe and pâté, and a butcher (named Roland Menut) in his white apron singing folksongs while chopping up dead animals with knives of an alarming size. He said he could order us a turkey anywhere from 8 to 28 pounds, and I asked Justine to measure her oven so we could get the biggest one possible.

Unfortunately, due to the reasonable French portion sizes and sensitivity to things like energy consumption, her oven was not actually any bigger than my microwave. So when I told good old Roland, he said I couldn't even cook a little turkey in my oven, and explained to me the science of roasting a bird in an oven and why mine was insufficiently large. I expressed my disappointment and asked what he recommended and he said, not to worry, HE would cook the turkey at the shop. I said that was incredibly kind, but the only trouble was that we traditionally stuff our turkey. Would he mind if I came to the shop in the morning with some stuffing? Not at all, he said, he would be happy to accommodate stuffing. As he has a gigantic restaurant sized oven, I ordered the biggest turkey available (it ended up weighing in about 23 pounds). So on the morning of Thanksgiving, after having stayed up until 1:30 cooking big batches of cranberry sauce with Nathalie, I got out of bed, taught an 8am class, and rushed home to make some stuffing. I had been drying bread for days, and our apartment was a veritable stale bread factory. I wept over some onions, poured in various amounts of all the spices I had managed to procure and whipped up some stuffing. I took a rental bike (the only way to travel) with our hugest soup cauldron full of stuffing in the front basket, and headed off to the boucherie (butcher shop). Roland accepted the stuffing with interest, as well as my extensive (and probably unnecessary, considering his profession) instructions on how to rub the spices (which I had also brought) onto the turkey. I told him I would be back (with a car this time, thank God), at 5:30pm for the cooked bird, and went back home to prepare.

Three other batches of stuffing (classic, Hallal, and vegetarian), a couple dozen corn muffins, two chocolate pecan pies, and some whole wheat bread later, Nat and I (in a friend's borrowed car) retrieved the beautiful and still piping hot turkey. I had made various American delicacies to thank Roland (who hadn't charged extra for the cooking, and who had given us his roasting pan), including cookies, muffins, a mini chocolate pecan pie and cranberry sauce. He seemed charmed, we exchanged cheek kisses, and we returned to campus, where I rapidly made some gravy and we headed to the party room, where some 40 of our closest friends were waiting.

I had asked the others to bring side dishes, wine etc, realizing that while I was happy to host a million people I could not realistically expect to feed them all myself. Thanks to Bike and Build, I know how much food it can take to feed a bunch of young adults. It turned into an extensive potluck, our friends from all corners of the globe outdid themselves following confusing American recipes for mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cornbread, green beans, salads, pies, applesauce, etc. It was the most glorious banquet in my recent memory, and the whole evening was a huge success. All the French people were legitimately impressed with American cuisine, which is no small miracle, and the bird was beautiful. I had tons of fun, everyone got some turkey (which was DELICIOUS), and we danced and drank wine and generally were thankful for good food, good friends, and good times all around. A holiday to remember. Now we are making soup (half the carcass at a time, because it is too big to fit all at once), washing many dishes, wearing sweatpants and vowing not to eat until Christmas.

(Others were in charge of photographing the actual event, so photos of turkey and festivities to follow soon, hopefully.)