Randomness

I had a particularly Parisian evening tonight.   I went to a French/English language exchange event in a bar (which I had been told about by a new Australian friend whom I met yesterday at an Anzac Day event), and as I was leaving, I got chatting to a lovely couple who weren't even at the event, they were just there having drinks - he's French/Moroccan and she's Colombian, but they're both from Los Angeles and now live in Paris.  So they invited me to join them for a drink and we ended up chatting for a couple of hours.

So, to recap - I found out about this event through an Australian, then met a French/Moroccan-American and a Colombian-American.  You might not think that's very Parisian, but trust me, when you're living as an expat in Paris, this is exactly how you end up meeting people...

Fried. Turkey. Parts.

Was this what we had for the redneck Thanksgiving?  Alas, no (but it's such a great title, I couldn't waste it).  Mr and Mrs Redneck had originally planned to deep-fry some turkey parts, since their apartment here in Paris doesn't have an oven, but they went with pre-cooked poultry and just heated it up.   Although, quite honestly, I'm amazed that any of us could eat our main meal considering that the pre-dinner snacks consisted of: nuts, olives, chips, popcorn, veggies and dip, two kinds of sausage, five kinds of cheese, and a five-layer Tex Mex dip.  Then there was: turkey, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, regular corn, macaroni and cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing and a cranberry jello salad sort of thing (which was actually much nicer than the jello salads I used to encounter when I was growing up in swamp country, so clearly, rednecks are a step up the culinary ladder from swamp trash like me!).

I was so busy cramming my face with food that I didn't even manage to drink all that much wine, but not to worry - Mr and Mrs Redneck are having another party tomorrow afternoon, which will be followed by a visit to the Paris Wine Show.  Yikes - you just know that's not going to end well for my liver...

Thanksgiving - redneck style

One of the wonderful things about living in Paris that you make friends with other expats.  In my case, the vast majority of my friends here are American.  I've never had American friends before (well, a long time ago there was that gorgeous American boyfriend who looked like a young Elvis Presley...sigh... Ahhh, back in the day Miss K had some game, let me tell you.  Ahem.  Moving on...), which you might think odd, since I'm Canadian and we're national neighbours, but Americans don't really seem to like crossing our border all that much.  I don't know if it's because they think they'll be eaten by moose, or seduced by socialized medical care, or freeze to death in July (because, hey, everyone knows it snows in Canada all year long, right?), but I just never met all that many when I lived in Toronto.  Also not when I lived in London, but in Paris?  The place is swarming with Americans, and may I just say, I am delighted to have made such wonderful, fun, generous, kind-hearted friends. 

So the point of this is to say that the awesome Mr and Mrs Redneck have invited me to my very first American Thanksgiving dinner tonight and I am in a state of excitement akin to a small, hyperactive child on a sugar high on Christmas morning.  Now, if you recall my post about Canadian Thanksgiving last month (thanksgiving), being in a foreign country poses certain challenges for such a celebration, so I can't wait to see what the Rednecks have come up with.  One thing I know they will come up with is a ton of alcohol, so I may not report until my sure-to-be-monumental hangover subsides tomorrow, but there will be a report and I'm betting it's going to be worth reading, because a Redneck Thanksgiving?  This is going to be FUN!

Gobble, gobble

Dammit!  There went my perfect record of posting every day in October.  Sorry -  I was defeated by post-Thanksgiving exhaustion, not food poisoning, in spite of worrying about that in my previous post.  So my first Canadian Thanksgiving in Paris was a big success, which is fortunate, considering that seven of my eleven guests were American and my nation's culinary honour was at stake!  Anyway, this is basically how it looked:

And it was fun, and it was delicious, and my guests were delightful, and I enjoyed the leftovers, but I am so freakin' happy it's all finished for this year - yaaaay!!!

Thanksgiving

It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, which is a big holiday in my native land.  And, what with my lumberjack shoulders and my fondness for maple syrup, I am a good old Canadian gal and I like to celebrate Thanksgiving.  But there are a couple of problems with this:

1) I live in Europe where they don't celebrate it at all, so trying to get the ingredients you need?  Not easy.   I can actually tell so many stories about trying to buy turkeys that I am going to do a whole separate post on that subject.

2) See above -  you can occasionally get those ingredients because some stores here stock them when Thanksgiving rolls around.  However, that's for American Thanksgiving, which is about six weeks later than the Canadian version.  Try to buy fresh cranberries in Paris in early October?  Ha!

3) I am insane to even attempt to do it here at all - it's so stressful that I only make Thanksgiving dinner every other year because it takes me that long to get motivated to do it again.  Which actually makes it a hot ticket and the parties just keep getting bigger - my last one in London was for 24 people.  A full-on turkey dinner for 24 - you see the insanity, yes?  Thank god I don't know that many people in Paris yet, but there are still 11 people coming for dinner tonight - eek!!!

And this year there is the added stress that I didn't know precisely when I would be moving (which still hasn't happened, btw, and don't even ask me when it will because I don't know - grrr!), so I am not even hosting the dinner in my own home, I had to ask friends to let me do it at their apartment.  So here's the rundown: I am about to go and cook a gigantic turkey, and let me tell you, this is not a nice tidy turkey you buy at the supermarket, this is one that was ordered from the butcher and it's got legs and wings sticking out all over the place, so I actually have to wrestle and tie it into a nice turkey-shaped bundle before I can even attempt to cram it into the tiny Parisian oven I have never used before.  Yep, this should be fun...  I will update you tomorrow on how it went, assuming I don't die of food poisoning before then.

We can call it Independence Day or Drink Till You're Stupid Day, whatever you prefer - I know which one applies to me...

Okay, so today is a bit of a cheat, seeing as how I spent it with my American friends celebrating the 4th of July at a picnic in the Bois de Boulogne - a good time if ever there was one!  But really, shouldn't that be a valid part of the expat experience in Paris?  I am going to go with "yes" as my answer to that largely rhetorical question and just tell you that there was good eatin', drinkin' and bein' merry as part of our Independence Day extravaganza.  All hugely enjoyable  - the only thing that could have made it better would have been able to see Independence Day (the movie) as part of the entertainment - a few of us made do with The Blues Brothers (dubbed into French, no less) at a bar, but it still wasn't quite right....