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A Foreign Service Moment: Thanksgiving in France
By Pam Miller
In 2000, our first Thanksgiving in France, I asked my neighbor, who had become a very good friend, if she knew of a place where I could find a turkey for our American Thanksgiving. Naturally, Chantal, who knows everything (and I say that very respectfully!) did know the best place in Lyon, and we had a very good turkey for our friends from the States who were visiting. The following is a letter to my Aunt Ginny telling the story of the next year's Thanksgiving turkey, when I was on my own.
Dear Aunt Ginny,
Last year for Thanksgiving, Chantal ordered a turkey for me from "La Dombes Volaille" and Jerry said it was the best turkey he'd ever had. So naturally I decided to go back to the same place this year for our turkey-only this year, I did it all by myself without help from Chantal. That may have been a mistake! I called and ordered the turkey about a week before Thanksgiving, and on the appointed day traipsed down there, pulling my shopping caddy behind me for hauling the bird home. "La Dombes Volaille" is located in Les Halles de Lyon where there are lots of little shops for any kind of food you can imagine, and is named for a part of the Bresse region where there are lots of little lakes, and Bresse poultry is known as the best in France.
As soon as I opened my mouth to explain what I wanted, Madam, behind the counter, understood that I was the American who had ordered the turkey. (Sometimes I don't even have to speak--I walk into a place, they look me over and say "Hello. Good morning." Maybe it's the shoes?) She smiled a broad smile and turned and hauled the thing out of the case in back-and all I could see of it was a naked body surrounded by tufts of black feathers. Honestly, the poor turkey still had goose bumps! She held it up for display quite proudly-head, neck and feet and all still covered with feathers! Fortunately, I'm hardened to the realities of French food shopping and didn't by the twitch of an eyebrow betray how appalling I found it. She asked me if I was going to prepare it myself, with a very hopeful look on her face which immediately fell when I said, "No no--vous!"
After I assured her that I really didn't want to do it myself, she plunked it down on the chopping block and whacked off its feet (whew!) and then started pulling feathers off the wings and neck. I quickly realized that she intended to leave me the choice portions of head and neck, and was very disapproving when I told her, in my fractured French, "Pas le tete!" ("Not the head!") and then "Pas le gorge!" ("Not the throat!") With an increasingly grim look on her face, and after whacking off the offending body parts, she yanked open the bird at both ends, stuck in both hands, and pulled out...well, we'll just allow a slight, lady-like shudder to describe what emerged. (Suffice it to say that nothing looked at all like what I pull out of a Butterball!) Even worse than that, though, was that she put some of it back! I wasn't sure what it all was, but I made an immediate note to have a plastic bag handy when I started working on this thing.
So now I have in the frig one Bresse turkey--without head, neck, feet and most of its feathers and one foot: the other foot with its accompanying tag proving it as a Bresse turkey was proudly, and defiantly, placed in the package. I found sweet potatoes and cranberries at one of the other shops at Les Halles, and one of my friends brought home cream cheese from the base in Germany for Jerry's favorite Jello salad. I still have to shop for broccoli and potatoes, and I better not forget-I have to walk to the store with my little "granny cart" and that takes time, so it can be a crisis to find I've forgotten something at the last minute! Tomorrow, I'm going to make pumpkin pies, a totally new taste for the French. I made them once last year when Chantal and Gerard came to dinner and they really loved them. Chantal immediately asked for the recipe, and when I showed her the can of pumpkin, she could hardly speak! She looked at me in absolute horror, and said, "But Pamela, you can buy real pumpkin!"
As you can tell, Aunt Ginny, Thanksgiving in France is much more like the original version--we have to hunt down our food and then pluck it! Among the Americans here, holidays are another time when we operate on the "grapevine system": Who's got cranberries? Where can I find sweet potatoes? What kind of cheese works for cream cheese? We share "intelligence" and blocks of Philly cream cheese equally, one being as important as the other. No one hordes such vital information, and nothing pulls the group closer together than the search for that one elusive, but necessary, missing ingredient without which no American dinner can proceed--like cans of pumpkin!
Bon Appetit!
Pamela Miller and her Foreign Service husband, Jerry, have been living in Lyon, France since May 2000. Pamela worked in Information Services at the Anne Arundel County Public Library for two years and before that in Readers' Service at the St. Louis County Library for seven years. The Millers have lived in Spain, California, Utah, Virginia, Missouri, Maryland and France. They have three sons and one grandson.