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| Our table seating was a little hodge podge but it worked. |
This was our third Thanksgiving spent in France. The past two holidays have been extremely un-festive. In 2009, my husband and I had just moved to Strasbourg. We had no furniture at the time. Well, we had a bed, a chair and an ottoman. So that was almost no furniture. We didn't know the French word for turkey and couldn't find anything obviously resembling turkey in the grocery store. So my husband made roasted chicken with potatoes. Since we didn't have a table at the time, I was the lucky one who got to eat while sitting in our only chair. My husband sat on the ottoman. It was either that or sit on the floor.
Last year, it was only me and my six month old daughter who were together to celebrate. My husband was on a business trip. Since the kiddo wasn't eating solid foods at the time, I made dinner for myself. I had a frozen pizza. It seems sad to write that now but it seemed comical at the time. My husband and I made ourselves a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner during the weekend to make up for it.
The American ex-patriot group in Strasbourg hosts a Thanksgiving dinner every year. It is held on a weekend so more people can attend. Thanksgiving isn't even a blip on the screen in France. Everything continues like normal. People go to work and to school that day. The Americans in Alsace dinner is held at a restaurant, which is nice, but it doesn't feel homey. An important part of Thanksgiving is the cleaning of the house, cooking all day long, the craziness of hosting so many guests, cleaning up afterwards, and most importantly, leftovers. None of that happens when you go to a restaurant.
So this year my husband and I decided to host our own Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment. We had had family over at our house in Pennsylvania probably six years ago. But my parents, grandmother, and father-in-law had made most of the food. We roasted the bird but the side dishes were brought by everyone else. This year, for the first time ever, we took complete ownership of a holiday.
The first hurdle we had to overcome was how to get a whole turkey. The French sell thin slices of turkey breast or turkey legs in the grocery stores but we have never seen a whole bird. We have heard rumors that they sell frozen ones in Germany but we didn't cross the border to confirm this. Thankfully, one of my husband's friends has a mother-in-law who knows a French farmer who raises turkeys. After some phone conversations and planning, my husband was able to drive to the farm and pick up a turkey just for us.
I felt guilty about having this animal lose its life just because we wanted to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. But putting that aside, it was a really interesting experience to cook and eat a farm raised turkey. To quote my husband, "This bird is all leg." The meat ratio of leg to breast was definitely different from what we were used to. This turkey had lived a life of running around instead of being penned up so it had built up its leg muscles. We nicknamed it Mr. Not Butterball. That was a good thing though. Along with its small amount of breast meat, we didn't have to worry about added hormones or antibiotics. It was a good trade off in my opinion.
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| The turkey took up a lot of space in our small, European fridge. |
My husband did all the necessary work on the bird. It came plucked with its insides cleaned out but its head was still intact. I was squeamish about that but my husband took care of it. He also put it in brine overnight and baked it to perfection.
Because I couldn't imagine myself using a fresh pumpkin to make pie, I asked my mother to send us pumpkin in a can. I have never seen that sold in a Strasbourg store. The canned pumpkin arrived in good time, only a little dented, which didn't hurt anything. My husband and I teamed up in making pie crust from scratch. A friend of mine had sent her "no fail" pie crust recipe. It was the flakiest pie crust I had ever eaten thanks to the addition of lard. Lard was definitely something that I had never bought in France (or ever) before. Once again, my husband turned to his holiday saving friend to find out the French word for lard and where it might be located in the grocery store. He was able to easily locate the
saindoux in the area where sausages are sold. We used our newly purchased
robot, or food processor, to mix things up. The pies turned out wonderfully!
After a day of cooking, cleaning (and entertaining our toddler while we cooked and cleaned), the apartment looked great and smelled even better. Our guests arrived. We hosted two families and one single guy. There was a combination of Americans and French natives as well as American and French born children. I never would have imagined hosting a Thanksgiving dinner where two languages were spoken around the same table. We feasted on Mr. Not Butterball, (who was moist and delicious), butternut squash soup, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, an upgraded version of green bean casserole brought by one of our guests, baguettes, pumpkin pie, and brownies brought by the friend who had hooked us up with turkey and lard. By the end of the meal, I was so full I could hardly move.
As our guests were leaving, one of them said that it felt like a true Thanksgiving. That was the best compliment they could have given me. They were right. It had been a perfect celebration. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving!
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| Our pumpkin pies and cranberry juice. I checked several grocery stores and was not able to find fresh, frozen, or canned cranberries. Because it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without cranberries, we had to go with juice. |
