Canadian Thanksgiving

So, apparently, Canada celebrates their day of Thanks in October. I am informed that yesterday was, in fact, the Canadian Thanksgiving. How ridiculous is it that I grew up 2 hours from Canada and I never even knew that they celebrated Thanksgiving until I moved to France? I feel like such an ignoramus. Ah well, learning late is better than never learning at all right? Sure, that sounds good to me. Why am I writing about Canadian Thanksgiving? I don't know, not much else is going on Sergy at the moment.
Sunday night we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with our upstairs neighbors, one of them being Canadian; thus how we discovered that Canadians do indeed celebrate Thanksgiving.
Now, seeing as we're in France we had no luck finding a Turkey; instead we had duck. I have never really had duck so this was a new experience for me. It was quite tasty. I love that Marion, our neighbor, got it at a chicken farm down the road. Yeah, who knew? You can walk down the road say, "I want a duck...that one looks good." They chop off the head, pluck the feathers and voila you have a duck: or a chicken and apparently occasionally you can get Turkey's there as well.
I have seen this chicken farm and had deciphered the sign enough to know that you could buy chickens there but I have been hesitant to attempt it. First off, my French is crap so I'd probably end up asking for a 3 kg police officer (a slang word for the police is poule - very close to poulet...or maybe it really is poulet, I can't remember) anywhoo I have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that it'd be a disaster. Yeah, I know I'm a big wuss. Second, I was afraid that I'd end up with a dead chicken that I'd have to pluck and clean and all that disgusting stuff. I'm up for trying new things, but that's a little too much for me. Now that I know that I wouldn't have to go through that perhaps I will buck up and attempt to buy a chicken there. If I doI'll let you know how it goes.
So, back to Thanksgiving dinner. It was very nice. We met some of our neighbors friends, which is great because we don't really have any of our own- friends that is! We started off the evening with a beer and chat standing around the kitchen. When we were nearly done with our beers we moved to the dining room to start dinner. I don't know about you, but at Thanksgiving we just sit down and dig into the Turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy. But no, we had appetizers! Smokes salmon. mmmm... delicious; along with some white wine.
They crack open the bottle pour everyone some, without actually asking if you wanted any or not, and started in on the smoked salmon. I'm sitting there with half a beer, a glass of white wine, and my plate full of appetizers thinking, "hmmm...what is etiquette here? Do I keep drinking my beer? Do I abandon the beer and start on the wine? Do I drink both at the same time?" I felt a bit lost. I glanced around to see what everyone else was doing and they seemed to all have finished their beers. Everyone except my husband and I, naturally. So, we give each other a look, a quick shrug of the shoulders and try and finish up our beer without guzzling it and without dripping it all down our shirtfronts. I mean, it' s not like this is a college keger - this is a sophisticated Thanksgiving dinner. With people who work at the UN and other international organizations. We don't want to look like the idiot Americans!
We finish up our beer as we finish up appetizers and as I start to think, "Let's see, I'll drink some water then I'll be good to go on the white wine." No sooner does this thought enter my head when it is announced that it is time for red wine with dinner - or red juice as our neighbor, Beat (he's from Austria), so pithily says.
Good lord, what is with these people? Beer, white wine, red wine, what's next? Are we going to drink our way through every alcoholic beverage in existence? Alright, so we start on dinner, which was excellent. Despite not having a Turkey it was very "Thanksgivingy". Mashed potatoes, yams, fantastic gravy, rolls, peas and carrots, squash, etc. A huge and satisfying feast. Followed up by a dessert of pumpkin pie with whipped gruyere cheese (instead of whipped cream - come on there had to be something European about it!) Of course, no sooner are we digging into our pie when it's time for Single Malt Whiskey: or Mingle Salts as that witty Austrian likes to call it.
I say, " I don't really care for Mingle Salts, but thank you very much. " It is insisted upon that I just haven't had the right kind of whiskey after I have been cross examined as to what exactly I have tasted in the past. "This," Beat says grabbing up one bottle from the collection of 10 he's pulled out for our tasting pleasure, "is a very good whiskey for women. You'll like it." Trying to be a polite guest I say, "Well, ok. I'll try just a little bit please."
He splashes it into the glass for me. We toast, for the hundredth time, and I splash it down my throat attempting not to gag or make rude faces at it burns down my throat. Nope, I don't like this lovely mingle salts "for women" either. Surprise, surprise.
As the evening progresses more wine comes out and thankfully about 11:30pm we stumble our way downstairs to our apartment and crash. Thank god we only had to navigate the stairs to get home or we would have been in trouble.
I don't know about you, but my family Thanksgivings were never like that. Those Canadians really know how to celebrate!
I would have written this yesterday,but seeing as I overindulged trying to be a polite guest I spent the majority of Monday curled on the couch with my dog nursing a pounding headache.
Yep, Happy Thanksgiving.