J'ai cuisiné le dîner de Thanksgiving!

My title this week involves the passé composé, the tense in which you express an action that has been completed.  There are many different past tenses to choose from when speaking.  I'm still confused about which to use and when.  Perhaps I should have used the imparfait? Or the plus-que-parfait? Je ne sais pas! :P

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I cooked Thanksgiving dinner!  Two of them, in fact.  But the one that I'll be writing about is what I prepared for my own host family.

When I arrived at home, I found that the kids were VERY excited to eat the special dinner and have guests over (I invited Mathieu and my friend, Alison).   They even prepared a little store, as well as a "map" of where to go to eat the food.

                                                                     Happy Ivning!

After I investigated their shop, it was time to get down to business: FOOD.  First of all, I think I mentioned somewhere that I was having a very difficult time finding a turkey.  Well, guess what? I never found one.  Instead, I roasted two chickens.  I bought them at the grocery store and was surprised to see that they were very... fresh!  I even had to pluck a couple of feathers off!  With some help from some fabulous people (thanks mom, dad and Mathieu!) I was able to roast them successfully. 



I also made a stuffing:

It was originally much too salty and not nearly enough for all of us, but a second batch (without the salt) fixed things nicely.  I don't really know how this happened, but it took me 4 hours to make both batches!!!  Good thing I did the stuffing a couple of days before...

The dinner was very fun!!!

                                    Dinner with Alison, Mathieu, the kids and the mom, Amélie!

                         The whole table!  I can't take credit for how lovely it is; Amélie did it. :)

You might be able to tell that I don't have many pictures of the food or the process... this is because I started to go crazy while cooking and forgot about everything but the food in front of me.  The potatoes boiled over all over the stove; the mashed potatoes got stuck in the food processor; I couldn't figure out how to make my green bean casserole without evaporated milk (couldn't find it in France).  But all of these problems were solved with the help of Alison and Mathieu!  (And the dad, Jan, cleaned the potatoes off of the stove!) 

And that was my first Thanksgiving.  I still think it's a crack-up that this happened in France, and that I didn't even have a turkey or cranberry sauce (two staples for Thanksgiving)... but luckily Alison (as an American) was the only person who knew that this wasn't completely authentic or perfect, and that I left out dishes and made some more "French". 

I found that Americans have a different way of appreciating something that's been done for them.  Had I cooked this for my own family or another American family I'm close with, I would have gotten bushels of praise, no matter if I'd done extremely well or simply decently.  But as we sat down to dinner, I found it an interesting cultural difference that my "French family" simply started to eat and briefly mentioned, "Thanks for cooking, it's good" after their first couple of bites.  Then they went back to eating without another word about it!  So... I guess it was ok?  This is an example of one of the many subtle differences between Americans and the French.  I guess I'll just say it: I thought my food was pretty darn good for my first Thanksgiving effort! :)

À bientôt!