Thanksgiving...sort of

Even the fresh flowers came from our market.

If I had to pick one American holiday that the french would love, it would be Thanksgiving. This food-centric holiday where families gather around the table is something that would appeal to them. They can respect a holiday where the meal focuses on basic farm ingredients that is shared among friends.   And for the same exact reason, Thomas and I love this holiday.  We already love cooking with each other. We love entertaining, and we love sharing with our family and friends.  We would have loved to have celebrated this holiday with the family in the US, but since we could not go home this year, organizing a small dinner party here in France around the Thanksgiving theme is a good second-best option.

Our dinner party would have been the first Thanksgiving for our friends, so we modified the dinner from the typical gorge feast.  We served three courses, and limited the sides to just four.  The menu included lots of autumn vegetables and flavors (all from our local farmer's market).  It took a couple weeks to come up with the menu. It was surprisingly difficult to find recipes where we could find all the ingredients here in France and could fit in a cooking schedule where our small\oven would be occupied for 5 hours. But in the end, the simple menu was relatively easy to do and was a big hit.

Our menu:

Starter - Pumpkin soup

Main- Peruvian Turkey

Sides- Brioche sausage sage stuffing;  

           Brussels sprouts with bacon vinagrette; 

           mashed sweet potatoes; and

           Green beans with roasted red peppers

Dessert- Pumpkin roll

Wine pairing:  Sancerre and Beaujolais for those who prefer red.

The menu was a success.  They were a little overwhelmed with all the side dishes,but they loved all the savory plates.  I was surprised at how much they loved the stuffing. Apparently that is something that the french don't do.  I thought it would have been too heavy for them, but everyone went for seconds.

The dinner was emblematic of our time here.  It was a combination of past and present lives. The conversation was just like the dinner, a hodge podge in both subject and languages (three languages were spoken at dinner yesterday - English, French, and German)

Thomas showing off his turkey (4 kilos).

Only two hiccups this year:
- I bought 7  kilos (14 pounds) of pumpkin because I did my conversion wrong  - should have halved instead of multiply. Our guest were happy to take home the extra.
- We forgot to give the door code so some guests were waiting outside for about half an hour.  Oops.