a perfect day for bananabread

coffee and bananabread :)

I guess I have to write a Thanksgiving post. It's more incidental than anything since all I did to celebrate Thanksgiving today was to make banana bread. This was also incidental; I just so happened to have three quickly deteriorating bananas in my room. There comes a time in every banana's life when it is ready to transcend to a state of banana bread.

But really, me and the other Americans (and one Englishman. And one Australian...I think) are having "Thanksgiving dinner" tomorrow night. It was more convenient. And we can do that, since we're in France. I brought it up a few times in my classes this week...which resulted in me explaining that no, Thanksgiving is not an extension of Christmas.

A few days ago, I made a pumpkin pie. I was not going to let this season pass without one. I bought fresh pumpkin from the market on Saturday morning. At first I thought there was no pumpkin here, but turns out French pumpkins just look weird. I had never made pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin before. Shame on me!

The recipe I used claimed to be "the pumpkin pie the pilgrims ate on the first Thanksgiving." Really though, it was pretty killer. It's from a cookbook my momma gave me on pies. Southern pies, to be more precise.

Everyone was skeptical at first. Especially Micka. "But it's a vegetable. Why would you make dessert out of a vegetable?" I assured him it was a good idea. And indeed, he was converted! This is a huge accomplishment that I am very proud of. He doesn't even really like desserts, but he smacked his lips after the last bite of his slice of pumpkin pie...

In other news, the new wine is here! It's called primeur, and there is primeur from basically every wine region in France. It's the wine that was made this past summer, so really new! Well, for wine, at least. So everyone here is excited about the Gaillac Primeur, since Gaillac is right next to Albi and produces a ton of (very good, I think) wine. The most famous primeur is the Beaujolais Nouveau, but I haven't tried it yet. Anyway, the night it came out, everyone went out to celebrate. Brent, Neill and I went to our favorite cafe, and the guy who owns it knows us by now because we go there so often, and he gave us a free round. Sweet man!

Cheers!