Thanksgiving in Paris

Another excellent Thanksgiving here in Paris, especially since I had the opportunity to enjoy the hard work and great cooking by another family. We used to host Thanksgiving parties here but I think I reached my limit when we crammed close to 35 people into 55m2 (half of that, really since no one ate in the bedroom, toilet or bathroom). Preparing in a small Parisian kitchen can easily take two days followed by another day or two of cleanup including dishes stacked up in the tub as we work through the stack. The last two years we had Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a Franco-American couple where the cook comes from Tennessee. That meant pecan pie and corn bread. I love both but growing up in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, we never had either so it was a great change.

This year an American family visiting from Berkeley hosted an outstanding dinner for 13 including their parents who were visiting from Ohio. A great addition (that I intend to try the next time I make stuffing) was stuffing with bits of merguez sausage, which I adore. The French twist to the dinner included Champagne and a nice cheese plate after dinner. When you're used to cooking in big American spaces, it's always a challenge to get used to Parisian sized kitchens and Betty Crocker-sized ovens that seem full when a 5 pound chicken is inside, let along a 14 pound turkey. Even with those challenges, wow, what a meal.

The parents of the California family are Republicans, so we were all treading lightly on the subject of politics and doing our best to avoid the topic so we did not offend the hosts or visiting parents. (We need to save our energy for our own internal family debates with the last remaining Republicans. I can't wait for Christmas!) Somehow the subject of Sarah Palin came up and naturally the discussion moved to the now infamous turkey slaughterhouse video. We were all laughing about how clueless she was though I did notice the otherwise friendly grandparents were not laughing quite as much as others. In fact, they weren't laughing at all. Uh oh, warning sign to change subjects. The problem is, Palin is the gift that keeps on giving so one story led to another and everyone (well, almost everyone) was laughing and then groaning about the $7 million book deal. The Palin book deal then led to the Joe the Plumber book deal (or is it music? or TV commercials?) and then *it* happened. The gravy bowl was being passed to the previously jovial grandfather and then bam, there it went. The gravy bowl fell and spilled creating a lake of brown gravy the size of Lake Erie in the middle of the table. Hmmm, maybe it's time to talk about something else.

We did move on and talked about the GI Bill and what a success it was in terms of giving millions of Americans the opportunity to seek higher education. Before the GI Bill universities were limited to fewer Americans so that program radically changed the US system. (Question: does anyone know if the GI Bill was available to women in any significant numbers or was it primarily men?) Change of subject, accomplished.

The Ohio grandparents left shortly after dessert (which included Southern pecan pie and homemade pumpkin pie made by the grandmother - it was excellent) and the discussion shifted back towards "socialist" programs such as the GI Bill and Medicare. My father also went to college on the GI Bill and later in life enjoyed the benefits of Medicare, another "socialist" program. It remains a mystery to me how so many people can overlook the "socialist" nature of such programs and be so critical of "socialism" when they've benefited from these programs, a point made by our delightful hosts. This was a point of conflict in my family for years and obviously I'm not alone on this one. Our hosts did a much better job of smoothing over the situation compared to the tradition in my family of passive aggressiveness.

As we were all leaving (and wrapping up the "socialism" discussion) our host left us with a great line that is so spot on: if the difference between "conservatism" and "socialism" is only a 3% tax rate difference at the top end, maybe there's not as much of a difference as some would like us to believe. Absolutely. But then what would we argue about?