Thanksgiving

Well  not so long ago Thanksgiving rolled around and while it may be a extremely well known national holiday in the United States, little is known about it in France. In general the French population when questioned about this topic will tell you " Ah oui ce le jour avec la grosse dande.. " or in other terms not much at all (that was exactly the explanation my host brother gave). Because of this outstandingly blank answer I prepared my self to introduce this holiday as best as  I could to my host family and friends.

For my family this started out by explaining the traditional menu to my host mother and then together deciding which recipes we were ready to tackle. All in all we decided on a small handful that seemed simple enough both in terms of ingredients and preparation.
This was followed by a trip to the supermarket, in which we spent a significant amount of time finding a list of ingredients that seemed uncomplicated enough to start out with but somehow became increasingly harder and harder to find.
All in all triumphant, minus some small details such never finding baking soda or having to pay nearly four dollars for a single Egyptian, yam.
My gleaming host mother assured me that already she felt as if we were on an adventure and that we had purchased foods that she would never think once to buy.
This summed it up for the shopping trip.

Now onto the cooking.
Due to the fact that on Wednesday afternoons I have no classes I quickly pedaled home ( I know ride my bike too and fro from school) and began to peel, slice and fry.
Importunately I had to do this alone as both my host brothers had sport and my host mom and dad were still working. This left me to my own means to find the various pots and pans and cook up quite the storm.Finally after a few hours my host brother Tom arrived and helped me figure out the specifics.
I will  keep it short by nightfall all was ready and my whole family was looking eagerly at the delights.
Asking all sorts of questions the most common one being "on mange tout sa ce soire" (do we get to eat it tonight)  but no no no as thanksgiving is on Thursday and the pie and turkey were still not finished I had to tell them they would have to wait another day.
Finally on Thursday we discussed the principle of Thanksgiving (  I attempted as best as I could to explain the whole pilgrim- native American stories) and feasted. All in all they finished with happy smiles across their faces and heaping tummy s = success!  I have to say that my whole family was very proud of me as well as myself as I have never cooked so much food. And of course I was especially glad that I left a good impression of the American culture and was able to truly explain and remove all misconceptions.