Thanksgiving Take 2

As you know we had to work on the real Thanksgiving, so we celebrated this weekend instead.
We went to the market on Saturday morning in search of a turkey. We didn’t find one. What we did find, and decided on getting, was turkey breasts. I didn’t want to sit at my landlord’s house all day on Sunday and babysit the cooking turkey, and I’m not a huge fan of taking meat off bones, so we went the easy route and got big fat turkey breasts.
Later on Saturday my roommate made a sweet potato pie because it was just about the easiest thing we could make. Initially we were trying to make a pie without an oven, but that turns out to be a bit difficult. Once we decided to borrow our landlord’s oven, it became a bit easier. We oculd have had apple or cheery or peach, but sweet potato was the closest we could get to pumpkin so that was it. My roommate also made a batch of stuffing. I realized as she was making it that stuffing recipes vary across the spectrum. At my house, we have stuffing that goes in the turkey and stuffing that doesn’t. We have it with and without celery to accommodate the many different taste buds. I found our that our family recipe does include sausage, but that’s never been in my stuffing as long as I can remember. Well the stuffing my roommate made had apples and sausage and turnips. I’m no food snob though, so I enjoyed it immensely.
Sunday afternoon we began the entire meal preparations. I got all the potatoes peeled and in the water to boil and put the turkey in two different pans sautéing in butter and spices. While all of that was going on our stuffing was in the oven across the way cooking and the fruit for our version of waldorf salad (apples, pears, bananas and whipped cream) was prepared. I let the turkey simmer in chicken broth for a while and then started the gravy prep. I didn’t know how to make gravy before coming here. Mom always does it, and I just never bothered, until this year, when gravy is needed for many dishes. I improvised off of my remembrances of her making gravy and it turned out pretty good each time. This time I thought it was great. It got to thickening a little and the stuffing came back to our apartment. We were ready. The wine was poured, and football was on my other roommate’s computer. We shared our meal with a Portuguese friend who we had to explain all of our traditions to. The meal was great and I ate too much like I do every Thanksgiving. We all went around the table and said what we were thankful for before dessert and enjoyed our pie. Chalk this one up to a Thanksgiving in France success!