A Very French Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving or as I like to call it stretch pants day is an American phenomenon. Trying to describe it to my French friend after I decided to spend Thanksgiving with him in Nice was nothing short of interesting. Nonetheless, I discovered that Thanksgiving could be summed up in three words: gluttony, booze, and football. Of course, this translates very differently into French.

For dinner we ate raclette. Raclette is French for delicious potatoes smothered in cheese and ham. Making raclette is very simple. First, my friend boiled a pot of beautiful fingerling potatoes. Then he opened a package of sliced cheese. In America, sliced cheese would mean Kraft singles. In France, its aged goat cheese of three varieties. After the potatoes finished boiling we placed them on our plates, smashed them with a fork, and topped them with chopped raw onion. Then the magic happened. He placed the slices of cheese onto small triangular pans which we placed under a small broiler in the raclette. As the cheese began to sizzle he placed slabs of ham and prosciutto on the griddle above the raclette. He poured the melted cheese onto the potato and onions and for the piece de resistance, added the pork. It was heavenly and we ate until there was no more cheese and ham left. Did I mention that the package of cheese serves 5? When we finally pushed away our plates I thought to myself- gluttony accomplished.

Next came time to booze. During dinner we split a bottle of Bordeaux. However, no Thanksgiving is ever complete without beer. We decided to head to a pub and have a beer while we watched the game. However, I discovered that pregaming is international. My friend likes to make his own rum. Strawberry, orange, vanilla, lemon, tea, anything and everything you could think of he has bottled with rum and stored in his cabinets. After careful thought, I picked my poison and took a shot of homemade vanilla rum which went down surprisingly smooth. Finally we made our way to the pub to, “take a beer and watch sport!” (Bless his heart his English was much better than my French). At the Irish pub he ordered us two Welscotch which I learned is a mixture of whiskey and beer. It’s delicious, much more alcoholic than the typical beer, and my new love. As we drank we watched futbol or as we Americans say soccer.

I have no clue who was playing, who won, or any details of the game. All I needed was the white noise of televised sports while I drank beer on a full tummy to evoke sentiment of Thanksgiving. The only thing that was missing- my dysfunctional but lovable family. So it didn’t turn out to be a literal or direct translation of Thanksgiving. Still, it was a great interpretation of my favorite holiday. At the end of the night, we toasted “santé” and had a very wonderful French Thanksgiving.