Thanksgiving was perfectly delightful. I ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners! Laura's parents are in town, but her Dad had some other dinner engagement last night, so I had a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner with Laura and her Mom. We had lentils, beets, potatoes, green beans, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Laura was a little sad because she had really wanted pumpkin pie, but they had not been able to fine canned pumpkin. The store "Thanksgiving" in the Marais was sold out of it.

The first dinner was around 6:00. Then I was invited to K's, where we had "un Thanksgiving europeen" with her French roommates G. and N., along with P, and V-M. Katie had not been able to find a turkey, so we ate "pintade," which is apparently guinea-fowl. It was good. We also had sweet potatoes (with orange and ginger, which I really liked), wild rice with almonds (P's family recipe), cornbread, and brussels sprouts with lardons. And for dessert, pumpkin pie! K. and P. had found canned pumpkin at a store called "The Real McCoy." The pumpkin pie led to a lengthy discussion about the French word for pumpkin, and what was the difference between "citrouille" and "potiron." Nicolas consulted a French-English dictionary that translated both words as pumpkin, but the French dictionary insisted that a "potiron" is bigger than a "citrouille." So there you go. The rest of the dinner conversation was a lot about Thanksgiving memories. It reminded me of another nice memory of Thanksgiving with Jesse's family--waltzing with Stefka while Jesse's uncle played the piano. And that made me really excited for my trip to Bulgaria with Jesse and Stefka, which is now only three weeks away.

I asked K if I could bring some pie home to Laura, who had gone to bed early because she had to be up this morning at 6:00 for a trip to Belgium with her parents. When I got home, she was awake. I told her I had pumpkin pie, and she got right up and ate it. I think it was 11:30, so it was even on the holiday itself.