Thanksgiving (and gumbo) in France

Hello! A lot has happened since we last posted to the blog about a month ago. In November we gave a “soirée de cuisine de Nouvelle Orléans”-- an evening where we hosted five people and taught them how to make jambalaya, seafood gumbo, and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. It was a big hit, and we plan to do it again in the new year.

We also took a trip to eastern France for a long weekend in mid-November. I had a one-day conference to attend in the city of Metz in the region of Lorraine (which has gone back and forth between France and Germany more than once in past centuries).

We spent the rest of the time exploring World War I battlefields, memorials, and cemeteries. It was a very educational and moving trip, but I’ll let Bob tell you about it when he has time to post his impressions and some photos.

The New Orleans cuisine lesson having been such a success, we decided to host an American Thanksgiving dinner for four friends: our friend Christy (my friend from high school who’s lived here for thirty years) with her friend Gérald who owns the chateau where Bob is cataloging the library, and our friends Françoise and Erwan who have good friends in the U.S. (Hawaii) and are interested in things American.

It was a little crazy – we were a overly ambitious and planned a lot of dishes – but then it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving if it were too relaxed! It was a challenge finding all the necessary ingredients, but we managed to do pretty well.

With the help of Françoise, who seems to know everyone, I ordered a turkey from a local artisanal producer. Here people eat turkeys for Christmas, and the birds are raised in such a way that they reach the most saleable size by the end of December. The idea of slaughtering and selling one of his birds a month early was a bit novel for the producer, but he was willing and even intrigued. I think it was most likely the first he’d ever even heard of Thanksgiving!

He has a stall at the weekly Thursday market here in Lannion, so it worked out well. I went with Françoise on Thanksgiving morning (which of course is just another Thursday here) to pick up the turkey. It weighed about seven pounds and had a few black/brown feathers still attached to it. It was definitely the athletic type, not at all like the usual American Mae West-style turkey!

The dinner was a big success. The turkey was delicious, if a little chewy – I think French turkeys get a lot of exercise). We also had bread stuffing, creamed spinach, creamed onions, and mashed potatoes and gravy (which is called “sauce” here). We even had cranberry sauce, specially brought over from the U.S. by a friend of Christy’s who just happened to be coming to France the week before Thanksgiving. I don't believe wine was part of the first Thanksgiving, but we consider it essential, at home as well as here--we served a very nice pinot noir from Burgundy, not a grand cru, but quite satisfactory.

Pumpkin pie wasn’t really an option because I couldn’t find anything here that tastes quite the same as American pumpkin. But sweet potatoes are available and I made my first-ever sweet potato pie, which turned out great! It got raves and several requests for the recipe.

In early December, Bob went to Paris for a week to take an intensive French course. The school arranged for him to stay with a couple in the 13th arrondissement. He had a wonderful time. He got to see a lot of architecture, especially by Le Corbusier, and he went to several museums.

The couple he stayed with, an engineer and a marketing director, turned out to be very interesting and fun people. We’re going to make sure we get together with them again. Bob will most likely post his photos and commentary from his time in Paris sometime in the new year.

I continue to be busy with all my activities. Most recently I’ve been helping friends put together websites for advertising their vacation rental properties. People want to reciprocate, but since I’m not allowed to work for money here, they shower me with other things. Most recently we’ve been buried under an avalanche of Christmas cookies, which is enjoyable if somewhat frightening. I’ve also been promised fresh eggs.

We continue to take weekly French conversation classes, and we’re now helping to host a weekly English conversation group, which is fun. It’s a nice antidote to the feeling of being constantly at a disadvantage linguistically, which can become a little tedious at times.

My French has improved greatly and is better than it’s ever been. I’m starting to have the enjoyable experience of forgetting that I’m listening to a foreign language and just absorbing the meaning of what’s being said without being conscious of making an effort.

But then sometimes I suddenly hit a patch where the going gets tougher, I lose track, and the illusion of perfect understanding is shattered. The other day it occurred to me that the experience is a little like being slightly deaf. You understand what’s being said…most of the time.

I’m also discovering that there are some people whose speech I can understand every word of, and others who might as well be speaking Swahili. One of the latter is the director of the chorus I belong to. I’m always pleased when I can understand more than one out of every seven words he says.

It’s weird; I don’t know why he’s so incomprehensible, but one of the other members told me she has a slight hearing loss and she has trouble understanding him, too. So maybe it’s not just me…

Speaking of the chorus, right now we’re in the thick of the Christmas concert season, and we’ve already given two of the three concerts planned for this month. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s fun to sing, and they’re a very sociable bunch of people. We sing “songs of the world”; for Christmas we’re singing carols and Christmas songs from France, Brittany, England, the U.S., Poland, Bulgaria, Provence, Catalonia, and Flanders.

The concerts are all being given in very old stone churches, and staying warm while singing is a real problem. Our last concert is tonight, and I’m planning to wear my snow boots, since cold feet were a serious issue during the first two concerts!

By the way, as a result of singing in the chorus, I’ve made my first appearance in the local paper!

Next Friday, the 22nd, we’re leaving to come back to the U.S. to spend Christmas with my mother in Ohio. We’ll be there until the 29th, when we’ll come back here to face the cold, wet, grey Breton winter. Brrrr! (or, as they say here, “Gla-gla-gla!”)

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you!