Thanksgiving in France

I am shocked at how lax I have become on this blog. My apologies.

On Saturday, a bunch of the assistants and some other people all gathered at one of the assistant's houses to celebrate our great American holiday of over-eating and togetherness. It was a pot-luck dinner so everyone brought a dish, unless you were me. And then you brought 3 different dishes. I made my aunt's bubble bread (which is a sort of Garlic bread), my grandmother's Lemon Jell-O and for those of you who have had it, it was amazing this year too, and my mom's green bean casserole. Needless to say, I looked a little funny bringing in 2 Lemon Jell-Os, 3 loaves of bread and 2 green bean casseroles. But I had heard that there were going to be a bunch of people there and I didn't want to run out.

Thanks to my over-planning, I got to go home with one Lemon Jell-O, one green bean casserole and 1-1/2 loaves of bread. There were about 30 people there but since everyone brought something, there was a ton of food and I don't think anyone thought to take a picture of the spread we had. That was a gross oversight. The food was pretty great though. There were Americans, Germans (one of the assistant's roommates was German so she invited people), a Venezuelan, British, one French guy I think and probably some other nationalities that I wasn't aware of.

I wish I could comment on all the food but here are some notable and some possibly strangest Thanksgiving food items: potato pancakes, a ton of baguettes, rice, tons of wine, egg rolls, 7 layer taco salad, pork chops, lamb chops...

Dessert was awesome: apple pie, some great tiramisu type dish, little petit-fours everywhere.

Notably missing food: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing. I was pretty surprised and bummed that many of the other Americans that came made nothing traditional (with the exception of one girl who made apple pie). To be fair, finding ingredients that are super common in America were very difficult to find here including: sour cream, Cool Whip, frozen bread dough, Jell-O (which doesn't exist here. I had to use plain Gelatin that I found in the back of the baking aisle shelf), lemonade that isn't carbonated, French's fried onions... All of these ingredients I needed for my Thanksgiving dishes and I had to improvise. But still... the Americans should have done something a little better than bring a box of cookies! (which someone did by the way...)

Here's a pic of Dawn, me and a very nice girl and friend, Leymi (from Venezuela) eating. This was the dessert course!

Here is a pic of me and Dela (the English girl who had the shindig at her place).


Your British word lesson of the day: jelly = Jell-o & jam = jelly. In a sentence: I made great Lemon jelly for Thanksgiving this year. I had some butter and jam on my toast this morning.