It’s a dark and dreary Monday here in Mazeroux! All this last week we’ve needed to light fire upon getting up, and on Tuesday night we had our first frost, when it got down to minus three. It’s milder now, but the sunshine’s long gone. As a result, the cats are now in full winter mode. Smeagol has ballooned and now weighs a ton, and the two of them have big fights every morning that drive us nuts.
It’s been another mostly uneventful week for us. In addition to a few side projects each, we also have one we’re working on together. This is the website for our villa rental client in St Tropez, which needs to be done by the end of the year. It’s now taking shape and the client likes the design, so we’re in good shape to meet the deadline. And after that one, things will hopefully calm down for Port 80, at least until 2019. We appreciate all the business, but I for one need to get on with christmas shopping and work is beginning to get in the way!
Matt went to the choir on Monday, and to the shops on Wednesday to get in Thanksgiving supplies. We did nothing in particular to mark the day itself, so I’ll skip on to the weekend. On Friday evening we were invited to Manu & Mathilde’s, along with Gael & Corinne. We’d not seen our hosts in a few weeks, and it had been far longer for G&C, so it was a very welcome evening.
We started off with a few vodkas each and got caught up with everyone. The meal, when we sat down to eat, was excellent. We started off with some homemade paté and the main was a chicken dish – an Ethiopian recipe. Ethiopian cuisine is apparently extremely spicy, so he’d obviously toned it down to accommodate french palates, but it still packed a good punch. We had a duo of desserts to follow, one courtesy of Mathilde, who made a sort of apple tart, and the other was a blackberry tart that Corinne made. We left at 1am, feeling stuffed.
After a little work in the morning, the afternoon was given over to Thanksgiving prep. This was made considerably easier this year as our guests were taking care of two key elements – the dessert and the turkey. Benoit had eagerly volunteered to do the turkey some months back and Matt was only too happy to let him. It took him a lot of effort but to our surprise, he managed to score a whole bird – and at 5kg, a good size one too.
Matt spent the afternoon preparing all the other elements – stuffing, rice, carrots, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts etc – while I tidied the house. Our guests started arriving a bit before eight. The full guest list was Benoit & Virginie, Eva, Jenny and her son Mathias, Fred the baker, Marie his partner, and Marie’s son, Théo. In addition to providing the turkey, the Pringault family also added lots of nice extra touches : Virginie bought dried flowers and made a big festive garland, and Eva made individual place names.
We tried to keep the aperitif course light and were sat at the table by around 9:30. With the exception of B&V, all our guests were Thanksgiving novices, but they soon got the hang of things. Everyone managed a second serving, some even a third. Benoit’s turkey was delicious, moist and buttery. He also made a veal stuffing that everyone raved about. And all of this was washed down with some truly stellar red wine, again courtesy of our guests. A couple that stood out were a 2006 Côtes-du-Rhône and a 2010 Châteauneuf-du-Pape… Mmmm !
After a short break, we moved on to dessert, which of course Fred was in charge of. Matt was hoping Fred would attempt the traditional pumpkin (or sweet potato) pie, but in the end, he went for that most quintessentially american dessert : apple pie. Well, it was more a tart than pie, but it was exquisite.
After dinner we were also joined by Eva’s new boyfriend, who confusingly enough, is also called Benoit. He’s a v nice chap who works as a chef at a nearby restaurant. Turns out this is La Paillote, the restaurant near Mum & Dad’s that we went to recently and that was due to close down. It seems the tenants have won a reprieve: the greedy landlord was unable to find anyone to rent the place at the rate he was asking, so agreed they could stay on for another two years, which is excellent news.
Having done two nights in a row, we were quite done in so didn’t have too late a night. I think everyone was slipping into a turkey-coma soon after dessert anyway. After a long sleep and a lie-in, we proceeded to have a lazy sunday. Band practises wont resume until December, which on this occasion was all to the good. And that’s the story of Thanksgiving 2018!