My family and I have celebrated Thanksgiving every one of the 27 years we’ve been Americans abroad.
I’ve shared some of the stories…
From plucking the feathers from the turkey a neighboring farmer provided me our first year in Ireland because that was the only way to source a turkey our first year in Ireland…
To learning to cook a turkey in our Irish Stanley cooker. Cooking in a Stanley is a skill I never did acquire fully. That first turkey came out cartoon crispy.
Our first year in Paris I asked our children’s friends to take up positions in the little hallway off the tiny kitchen of our apartment—one holding a tray of biscuits, another two pumpkin pies, and the third a green bean casserole in a Pyrex, all destined eventually for the inside of our oven. Meantime, all the counter space in our tiny kitchen was occupied. It was either ask the kids to lend their hands or line it all up on the floor.
The next month I discovered a tray of uncooked biscuits in the linen closet. I’d been short youngsters willing to hang out indefinitely in my kitchen hallway that Thanksgiving Day so I’d stashed the extra biscuits in the closet, planning to pop them into the oven just before calling everyone to the table. That was the last thought I ever had about those biscuits… until, two weeks later, when I opened the door to that closet in search of my Christmas tablecloth.
Preparing a traditional Thanksgiving dinner beyond U.S. shores has become easier with each passing year.
Last Wednesday, when Lief and I set out to acquire the necessary fixin’s, we didn’t have to go far. Three blocks from our apartment, we saw for the first time ever a butcher advertising Thanksgiving turkeys in his window. “Order Now!!” he encouraged…
We’re loyal to the butcher on our street and had ordered our bird, roasted and garnished, a week earlier…
We spent Thanksgiving this year with our daughter, her husband, and our two little granddaughters at their apartment, just on the other side of Invalides from our apartment.
I couldn’t find cranberry sauce this year and substituted tarts aux pommes for apple pie. Otherwise, our table likely looked a lot like yours.
Many of the ingredients for the classic meal came from La Grande Epicerie Paris. This gourmet grocery store on four levels makes shopping for food a memorable experience. In addition to everything you’d expect to find here… like French meats and cheeses…
You can also splurge on specialty items imported from across the globe, including the good ol’ US of A…
The U.K. section carries one of my favorites from Ireland. Fig Rolls featured importantly in my afternoon tea break every day we lived in Waterford…
I could spend hours in La Grande Epicerie Paris, taking my time wandering from floor to floor and section to section. Alas, our Thanksgiving shopping accomplished, Lief reminded me that we’d better get going if we wanted to be at our laptops by the time our team in Panama arrived to the office.
We checked out and headed back out onto rue du Bac for the quick walk home…
Time to get back to work.
Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
