Food, glorious food!

So it has been a food-filled few days since I last updated, and for a change not much of the aforementioned food has been French.

My mom arrived on Thursday and, despite the fact that Thursday night was our group Thanksgiving dinner, we decided to go to Angelina's for hot chocolate and a Mont Blanc beforehand. Words cannot describe how amazing it was. The hot chocolate there is literally what happens when you take a block of the most delicious, richest and probably most fattening chocolate on EARTH, put it in a cup and melt it. Then you put a huge blob of chantilly cream into it and consume, taking breaks periodically because ingesting that amount of chocolate is no easy feat. A Mont Blanc is essentially a huge ball of chantilly cream, thickly coated in creme de marron (chestnut cream) and sat atop a marang type thing. The only problem with them is that you probably won't be able to bring yourself to eat another one for at least six months later.

Thanksgiving that night was in an odd restaurant on Blvd. Montparnasse not far from Reid Hall, where they stuck us on the basement with a lot of flashy lights and did their best to recreate a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The fact that they even tried was pretty adorable, which made up for the fact that, let's face it, French people just don't get it. We had turkey of course, but it was rolled into a weird little cylinder shape with the stuffing (mostly finely minced vegetables and some kind of sauce) inside. The mashed potatoes were actually chunky and delicious (surprising, since the only puree I've ever had here has been very, very fine), but the green beans were gross and obviously from a can. The pumpkin soup they served us for the first course was really good even though it tasted not a whole lot like pumpkin. And then there were profiterols (sp?) for dessert because the French (understandably) have no concept of pumpkin pie.

Anyway, it was entertaining. Emily and I walked home in the FREEZING COLD, and when I arrived I found my mom eating apperatifs with French people. Then Marie-Antoinette (no joke, that's still her name), tried to teach me how to walk with a dictionary on my head for some reason I still don't understand.

The next day was our Thanksgiving with Valerie and basically every other French person in the world. Mom and I proceeded to not wake up until 11am, at which point we sort of panicked and hurried out to do the shopping. We ran around looking for the ingredients for stuffing, sweet potatoes w/ brown sugar and butter, green bean casserole, pearl onions w/ some kind of saucey thing, pumpkin and peacan pie, as well as the stuff for the apperatifs. Compared to the actual cooking, the shopping was easy. Which is saying something because I'm pretty sure it took us a good half hour to figure out what was heavy cream and what was sour cream (which is kind of important when you're using it to make pumpkin pie).

Once we got back to the house with our little wheely cart full of food stuffs (and some pizzas because we were dying of hunger), we began the process of cooking on someone elses kitchen. Let me just point out that French peoples kitchens are, first of all, TINY and second of all just plain weird. A can opener? Oh yes, there's a can opener, it just happens to be a jagged little piece of metal that you have to STAB into the can and then SAW UP AND DOWN AT THE RISK OF HACKING OFF YOUR FINGERS until the can is open. Luckily the three cans of green beans we needed had those easy-open tops, but sadly I can't say the same for the two pumpkin pie mixes and the cranberry sauce (which we made Valerie open in the hopes that she would show us how you're actually supposed to do it, but it turns out that we were right and can openers in France are just idiotic).

We made the pies first (in ridiculously huge pie pans), then we peeled, cut and boiled the sweet potatoes and baked them with brown sugar and butter (they were amazing), and ripped up two baguettes, cooked some sausages, and hacked up a whole lot of cellery and onions for the stuffing. The green bean casserole was interesting because the canned beans here are not at all like the ones we have at home, the mushroom soup isn't condensed, and they don't have little onion rings to go on top so we used onion crackers instead.

We actually didn't have too much trouble with the turkey, which Valerie had ordered from the butcher. It had been stuffed with god only knows what because French people have a very different idea of stuffing, but it actually was pretty good. And the turkey itself turned out really well even though carving it was a fairly interesting process, mainly because no one knew how to do it.

There were eleven of us for dinner--me, Mom, Valerie, Maria, Edouard, Sophie and Jean-Michel and their daughters Camille and Juliette, and Madame Stevens and her husband Jean-Francois. It was a good time, the food was delicious, and even though none of the French people liked the pumpkin pie (it turned out a little different just because of the weird ingredients, but I think pumpkin pie doesn't translate well in general), I had a lot of fun. I even made little leaf-shaped place cards for everyone, which they thought was hilarious. I would have made a turkey center-piece if I knew where to find pinecones, but I don't think they exist in Paris.

Mom left on Saturday morning, and all I did during the day was eat leftovers. Sophie and Jean-Michel actually came over again, expressly to eat the leftovers, and then Leah and Kristin showed up and had some pumpkin pie before we headed to Ellen's.

Ellen's apartment is RIDICULOUS. She has a gorgeous, unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower from her bedroom window and an upholstered hallway along with the biggest kitchen I have seen in France so far. She also has a marble floor. On the ceiling. I don't know what that's about, but it is the shiniest thing I have ever seen in my life and I kept getting distracted from The Devil Wears Prada to stare at it. Ellen's host mom (who goes away to her country house every weekend) also had a lot of silver tea services, fainting couches, and things that looked like family heirlooms. She may or may not have been horrified to know that there were seven little Americans squealing about her worldly possessions while they cooked macaroni and cheese and watched a chick flick. But she told Ellen she could have friends over, so maybe not.

After our mac&cheese, which we made with huge blocks of ementhal and gouda, we (and by we I mean Leah, who I am going to marry because she is an amazing cook) made pancakes with apples and chocolate, which we ate with maple syrup and nutella (not all at once, obviously). It was absolutely delicious.

Today I have done absolutely nothing useful except write in this blog and eat cereal and madeleines. Quelle vie!