now that's what I call Thanksgiving

My friend Alison arrived on Saturday. Packed among her cute velveteen trousers and cold weather gear were groceries: pecans, cranberries, canned pumpkin, candied yams, Stove Top Stuffing, and a magic turkey roasting bag. All the necessary ingredients to prepare a real Thanksgiving meal in France. This event was several weeks in the making. I told Virginie that I wanted to cook for her and a couple of the teachers at school. The guest list grew to ten, but I wasn't intimidated, until I remembered that I have the world's tiniest oven unfit for roasting the bird of honor. She kindly offered to cook the turkey and host the meal at her house. Excellent. The quest for ingredients began.

Virginie ordered a turkey from the butcher (it's not turkey-eating season here) and Emmanuelle found real sweet potatoes. I found cranberries - a miniscule box of them - at Géant, but they were too pathetic looking to go on the table. That, and it would have cost about $15 to buy enough for everyone to have a spoonful of sauce. Fortunately, Alison was due to arrive and agreed to do some shopping Stateside.

The day before the feast, I picked her up at Roissy and after a bowl of butternut squash soup, we did some last-minute shopping in Poix. After napping, we made a pumpkin pie and a chocolate pecan pie. I peeled and cooked the potatoes - regular and sweet. I just couldn't bring myself to prepare the traditional green bean-mushroom soup casserole, so I steamed fresh beans instead. We made two kinds of sweet potatoes - one with marshmallows and the other with pecans and brown sugar.

We went to Virginie and Rodolphe's on Saturday evening to drop off the roasting bag and check out the freshest turkey I've ever seen. And let me just say that there is no such thing as an 89¢ a pound turkey in France! We went over the roasting directions, enjoyed a cup of tisane, and headed back to Poix. Sunday morning, I got up to put the final touches on everything. We got to Amiens just after noon, and I assumed my place in the kitchen. We had to reheat everything Alison and I had made in advance, and make the dressing and gravy. The guests arrived, and we sat down in the living room for an apéritif. Even if it's an American meal, we couldn't get together without our before-dinner drink.

The meal itself was a hit. The sweet potatoes - both kinds - were favorites, as was the cranberry sauce on turkey. Then came the pies. Emmanuelle made a real pumpkin pie, so we had three, and everyone had to have a slice of each. Since there wasn't a post-Thanksgiving football game on TV, we walked to the marché de Noël in Amiens. An appropriate transition from one holiday to another, I believe.