This Thursday is the US holiday of Thanksgiving (a sort of warm-up for Christmas, where you get to eat roast turkey, stuffing and other yummy treats). As we knew quite a number of Americans in London, and had a really amazing kitchen, we were in the habit of playing host for the meal – and a certain someone is very keen to keep the tradition going out here in the Dordogne, come Hell or high water…
So, Sharon will be joining us tomorrow, along with a really lovely, local lady called Babette, who lives up the road and often dog-sits when Sharon goes back to the UK. She is a real character – and doesn’t speak a word of english, so it will be a great opportunity to practise speaking français. Yesterday, we headed out at around 12:30 to the closest big supermarket, called Super U. Unsurprisingly, given how many Americans you don’t get in these parts, the shelves weren’t exactly bursting with things like cranberries, or indeed, turkeys… After about 15 minutes of searching (during which a nasty foreboding started to build in me) we abandoned the Super U in favour of a larger supermarket called Carrefour, a little more out of the way.
As expected and feared, they too were lacking in Thanksgiving fare. Growing increasingly frustrated, we eventually had to compromise on dried cranberries for the sauce and 3 miscellaneous turkey parts instead of a whole bird. We ended up spending slightly more than 3 hours on this quest, at the end of which we were both very hungry and generally fed up. Back home, we saw Babette, who had come to see Sharon, so we chatted for a brief while – and she asked us how the preparations were going for the meal. When we told her about the turkey-related woes, she explained how it was easy to get whole, ready-to-cook turkeys at any butchers or supermarket, as long as you order in advance and pay a small deposit. I hesitated before translating this to Matt… but he took it very well, all things considered.