The Reluctant Parisienne's Franco-American Thanksgiving

Pro tip: A laptop aids in the pounds-per-hour to kilograms, and Fahrenheit to Celcius conversion.

Our correspondent Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years. When she's not busy trying to figure out what the French are saying, she's busy trying to figure out what to say to the French. She posts frequently at An American Mom in Paris.

Holidays abroad can be lonely. When a holiday rolls around, we ache a little and talk about home a lot. We put on happy smiles for the Skype session involving every relative we have, plus a few we didn't know existed, all of them crammed into one room chatting and laughing and having drunken angry fistfights while we suffer the family togetherness from too far away. Then we crawl into the corner to cry and drink wine.

Thanksgiving, especially, can be bleak because it's a non-event here in pilgrim-free France. Christmas and New Year's are happy times because the city is full of fellow revelers but for Thanksgiving, you're on your own. You still have to go to work and you don't get the long weekend to eat cold turkey sandwiches and buy bigger pants.

Last year, determined to make Thanksgiving happen in the middle of Paris, we banded together with a group of fellow American ex-pats. New York Mom was in charge of procuring and cooking the bird. The butcher's eyes widened when she said she wanted to purchase the grandest turkey in all of France. He frowned and said the turkey she wanted was way too big for seven adults and a handful of children. She said, Duh, that was the point. He unhappily sold her the bird, probably assuming most of it would go to waste, but he doesn't know Americans like we know Americans. 

I was in charge of my specialty, midwestern cheesy potatoes--"midwestern" because the recipe calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup and a crunchy corn flake topping. I was also responsible for tracking down a jar of cranberry sauce. No one in our group liked cranberry sauce but we agreed it should still be present on the table, preferably plopped into a bowl and still in the shape of the can like mama used to make.

Sharp cheddar cheese and cranberry sauce are elusive ingredients in this town. I hit several grocery stores and best I could find was a small chunk of regular cheddar that cost a bazillion euros per kilo. Forefather Pilgrims, I hope you averted your eyes when I skipped the cheddar and substituted more attractively priced French cheeses. 

My search for cranberry sauce led me to an overpriced specialty American grocery store. The tiny store was crammed full of marshmallows and Jell-O, Triscuits and Jiffypop. I hadn't seen this stuff in so long and wanted it all in my mouth immediately. I'm embarrassed by how nuts I went. There were some Aunt Jemima and Dorito products purchased along with my cranberry sauce, but I refuse to comment on the trail of Pop-Tart crumbs that led from the store back to our apartment.  

I was not the only one who had problems finding American ingredients for treasured decades-old family Thanksgiving recipes. Many substitutions were made. Yogurt was used in place of sour cream and day-old baguettes were jumped up and down upon to procure breadcrumbs. We worked and worked, cobbling together our Thanksgiving dinner with foreign ingredients and a whole lot of can-do attitude.

As our friend's apartment filled with the scent of close approximations of Thanksgiving foodstuffs, we fired up the Slingbox to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We saw a few small floats go by before one of the New York natives in the group asked, "Where the hell did the city go?" We all squinted and leaned forward and agreed the parade was shot from a strange angle that seemed to make New York City disappear.

Lots of things were strange about the parade. We could plainly see large trucks pulling the floats. The balloons were a bunch of B-list cartoon characters, some of whom we'd never heard of before. Captain Underpants? Really? There was not one episode of awkward lip-syncing. One of the "floats" was just a rickety half-pipe filled with adolescent skateboarders.

We were shocked. Were things really that rough back home? We knew times were tough for a lot of people so perhaps Macy's was trying  to be sensitive by hosting a more modest parade? Man, we wondered, should we send our families some money? We squinted at the screen some more and hang on, wait a minute, wait a minute--it kinda looked like...those buildings--Detroit?

Through a snafu with the Slingbox, we ended up recording the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade instead of its better-looking and much more popular New York counterpart. We felt relieved, canceled the "Just because we love you!" checks we'd already frantically thrown in the mail, and relaxed once more. 

Good for Detroit. If they could still celebrate and be thankful, then anyone could. We felt cozy and content as we watched the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade and celebrated Thanksgiving in France by eating camembert and brie cheesy potatoes with a side of Pop-Tarts. It was ass-backwards but thanks to our fellow ex-pats, it definitely wasn't lonely.

Happy Thanksgiving, Seattle!