Thanksgiving…better late than never

The Thanksgiving Spread

I only celebrated Thanksgiving one day late, but am about a week late in doing this post.

Last week, during my third amazing Thanksgiving in France, I was feeling pretty grateful. Grateful for my American friend and her French boyfriend who came to visit for the weekend and celebrate the holiday with us. Grateful for the amazing food we cooked. Grateful for my British friends who came over to celebrate their first (and not last) Thanksgiving. Grateful to live in such a beautiful place. Grateful for the delicious eau de vie the farmer down the road makes. Just overall grateful.

Normally when Thanksgiving rolls around I am all about trying new recipes. One year we even had an all vegan Thanksgiving. Maybe as a reaction to being abroad during the holiday, the last few years I’ve wanted as traditional a menu as possible. The only untraditional thing about our meal this year was that we roasted chicken instead of turkey as there were only 6 of us and whole turkeys are difficult and expensive to find in France (maybe you remember the giant 60 euro beast we consumed last year?).

Our menu consisted of roast chicken, gravy, sautéed brussel sprouts, roast carrots and parsnips, heaps of buttery garlic mashed potatoes, sage and celery dressing and cranberry sauce (made with fresh cranberries, a rare find here!).

We had some breakfast mimosas to get us in the mood to cook

The brussel sprouts, parsnips, celery and herbs all came from the garden, making it all the more delicious (at least to me, having put so much sweat into that garden recently).

Free-range brussels

Picking some herbs

Steven helping me by looking serious

Gettin’ that celery

Dans mon potager (In my vegetable patch)

After two servings of all that Thanksgiving glory on Friday, we felt the need to get out and walk a lot that weekend. Luckily, we’re not short on beautiful places to walk around here…