This year a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, my wife comes to me and says, "Hey, I would like to invite some people from work over and show them our American Thanksgiving. Would you cook a Thanksgiving feast for them to taste?" John: "Baby, I would love to do that for you, how many people are you thinking?" Liz: "I was thinking about 12-16 people." John: "Whew, that is a lot of people."
Now some of you are thinking, "John, that is nothing, you have thrown parties at your house for many more than that. What are you worried about? " I would agree with you for the most part, but we are not in the US where I have my giant kitchen with double ovens, warming drawers and a dining room that I can fit 30 people. But nonetheless, I say, "I will do whatever you need me to do, I think giving your french co-workers a taste of American Thanksgiving is a great idea."
So for a couple of days, I came up with a menu and then we started to talk logistics. Some expats here are lucky enough to have a place where they can entertain. We are also lucky to have a house rather than an apartment, but this house is compartmentalized. There is no room for moving things around to make space, so in order to get that many people, we will need to add a second table in our living room and get some chairs as well. Then there is the decision as to who do you put at which table and which table she sits at (something we learned when we spent 2 weeks in China). You don't want to insult anyone by not sitting with them. So we talked with family and finally came up with a great idea of appetizers (canapes) and desserts based on Thanksgiving.
So, I created a new menu based around thanksgiving ingredients, but with a french flair. So my menu was: 1. Crostini with a blue cheese spread, piece of turkey and topped with cranberry sauce; 2. Turkey salad sandwiches (with walnuts and celery); 3. Brioche sweet potato cups; 4. Stuffing balls; 5. Cucumber cups stuffed with shrimp salad; 6. Green beans wrapped in prosciutto. I had to make around 60 of each appetizer. Liz then made 6 desserts which included Chocolate chip bundt cake with chocolate ganache, apple spiced cake, pumpkin cookies with brown sugar icing, pumpkin cheesecake and cinnamon apple bars with brown sugar icing and chocolate ganache. We also purchased French champagne to go with it.
We set the part for 4pm and set it up in the cafeteria at her work. We had the help of our friend Kristin Bell, a co-worker and another french co-worker. By 3:55 we were ready to begin feeding. At 4:15, no one had shown yet, you get nervous and forget that this is france, that everyone is always late. About 5 minutes later people came flooding in. Liz welcomed everyone and described what was on the menu and how thanksgiving started and what it means to us; Americans.
Everyone began to eat, sample and try all the food. I think they were amazed at the array of food and that they were able to understand what Thanksgiving tasted like. it lasted till about 5:30 and everyone went back to work or went home. We had some food left and Liz left most of it at work and was going to take it to a meeting the next day to be finished. The next day the meeting was the highlight as the food was gone. You never know how well the event goes, but the next day, she was presented with beautiful flowers and a thanks for putting it on. Her boss asked if we could do that every week it was so good. I told her once a month might be a cool thing, but you only get 1 for free, the rest you gotta pay for. it took a lot of time and energy and I want paid.
It did make me realize I like creating something from nothing and experimenting and coming up with my own creations. So maybe I will try harder at cooking new and better dishes for my family.
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