Just because I'm in France doesn't mean I missed out on candy for Halloween or a huge meal on Thanksgiving. Before I left I told myself I would make the full Thanksgiving meal turkey and all, so within a few weeks of my arrival in France I had my parents send some of my favorite recipes so I could plan in advance my favorite meal of the year. Since the fourth Thursday in November in France is not a National Holiday and the whole Thanksgiving meal would be too big for me to prepare after I get home from school at 5:30 I decided to wait until the weekend. The actual day of Thanksgiving I wished my friends Happy Thanksgiving it took them a while to understand so after I explained the holiday they wished me Happy Thanksgiving in return and did the bise which added a little French twist to the American holiday. My History teacher also realised it was Thanksgiving when two more girls from my class wished me Happy Thanksgiving and did the bise and then said "Oh yes, it's the day of the Turkey." That Friday I went to Valence, the closest large city, to find the "foreign food" I needed for all of my recipes which included; cranberries, Turkey, sweet potatoes, brown sugar and cider. The only thing that we had trouble finding was a Turkey, which aren't that common in France except for Christmas, eventually we found one but the largest that they had weighed only five pounds. Friday night I got to work on the cranberries which was the only dish I had enough time to prepare ahead of time and refrigerates well.
Preparing the cranberry sauce.
Cranberries before. This was the first time I had ever made cranberry sauce and I never realised how easy it is, you just boil the cranberries in sugar water and wait for the cranberries to burst. Now I'll never have the canned cranberries again.
And after, you can see it's starting to look more like a sauce.
Saturday morning I got up, had breakfast and went right to work in the kitchen. I started with the Sweet Potato casserole, which took forever because I had to individually cook each sweet potato in the microwave and each one took around 8 minutes to cook and I ended up burning my thumb in the process.
The topping for the Sweet Potato Casserole.
The Sweet Potato Casserole ready to cool.
Then I worked on the stuffing.
I had finished the turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole and stuffing when the first of my friends started to arrive. In France, it is expected that if you are invited to someone's house for a meal you bring a small present. My friends brought me an orchid, papillotes (French Chocolates for Christmas), more chocolates from a nearby dessert shop and a tile with a painted flower which on the other side says " A little souvenir from France ♥ Sarah".
Sarah also drew me this which I kept on my whiteboard in my room.
Since the pie, mashed potatoes,and gravy still weren't done I put my friends to work. Here they are making the pie crust. All of the recipes I had were in English and used American measurements, luckily I had brought cups, tablespoons and teaspoons with me because we still had to do a lot of converting with Fahrenheit and Celsius and the butter which is hard to put in a measuring cup.
Marie cutting our modest turkey.
All of the food we made (clockwise from the top); mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. Not shown; gravy and apple pie.
Sarah, Marjorie, me and Marie.
My plate.
Before we ate my friends asked me if there was something my family and I would normally do before we ate at Thanksgiving, I said that my Grandpa would say a prayer but that some families would go around the table and say what they are thankful for so my friends and I decided to do the same. I started and said I was thankful to have the opportunity to be in France, Marie said she was Thankful that I was in France, Sarah said that she was thankful to have such great friends and Marjorie said that she's thankful there's such great food! I think they really liked it because at the end they jokingly said Americans actually know how to cook.
Sadly, we put the pie in the oven right before we sat down to eat so by the time I took it out of the oven and it cooled my friends had had to leave.
Halloween
Halloween I went over to another American AFSer's house who's name is coincidentally Laura, we were then joined by another Ameican AFSer who lives nearby named Eliza. In the afternoon we walked to a closeby grocery store to by ingridients for all of the sweets we planned on baking that night and then went to a McDonald's for a snack, how American of us, but in my defence it was the first time I ate at McDonnald's in France.
Laura and Eliza at McDonald's with their ice cream.
When we got back to Laura's house we got busy with all of the desserts. Each person had a different task, I was on cupcake duty, Laura was incharge of the cocolate chip cookies and Eliza decided to do the Trader Joe brownie mix that she got in the mail. Here's a photo of the cupcakes, brownie batter and chocolate chip cookies.
Me and the cupcakes, complete with halloween cupcake liners and cat and spider toothpicks.
Me, Laura, Eliza and the cousin of Laura's host family indulging our sweet tooth after dinner.
Laura with trick or treaters, yes, the doorbell rang a total of three times, which I think is pretty good for a town in France.
