Alas, we could not fly home for Thanksgiving, so we decided to drive down to Switzerland with friends from work (Andrea, Tim, Joe, Jim, Theresa, Gaby, and Irma). In this picture you can kind of see our chalet in the upper left corner. The connection to the Chalet is that when Andrea and Tim worked in Geneva last year, Tim's boss had a chalet that he let friends stay over the weekends - it reminded me a lot of the cabin in Owen County, quite frankly. The place was pretty huge - the only problem was that it had some low ceilings and beams - so my head is banged up a bit.
Probably the biggest memory of the weekend was lugging all our crap up the hill. We were told that if it had snowed, then it would be diffuclt to drive the car up the "hill". Of course it snowed, and we had a 20 minute hike up - probably didn't help that our tires had about as much tread as a figure skate. Needless to say, we made three trips in one night - including one especially memorable one with a 75 pound piece of luggage (they really don't roll in a foot snow that well). I told Tim (Andrea's husband) that we probably broke every rule of hiking that I learned in Boy Scouts.
The food was great. Although we had two turkeys, we cooked the first one and had meat left over (we cooked the other one later in the day). We also had a corn souffle; brie/spinach/artichoke dressing; regular dressing; a fruit cranberry compote; a 'unknown' french squash soup, mashed potatoes, gravy - the usual American meal, but difficult than usual to get the ingredients.
For dessert Tim and Andrea made a pumpkin pie (one of the better ones I've had), and Gaby and Irma made a flan. We also got a recipe from Joe's mother for a banana creme pie (which Joe probably had 80% of it).
Not sure if I remember all the alcohol we had - had a nice magnum of Cremant from Alsace, several whites and reds, and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
It was a totally different Thanksgiving than I've had in the past, and I think it probably helped that we worked on Thursday, and didn't have our dinner until Saturday.
The other thing we realized is that we're really excited about our ski weekend before Xmas (which is going to be about an hour south of where we were, but in France. We went with the catered option so we don't have to worry about food - and after planning, transporting, cooking, and cleaning up for basically one meal - we're glad we put up the little extra.
And one more thing sent from Indianapolis in the last Patrick shipment was the Thanksgiving Turkey, which arrived safely and was carried to the chalet. I always remember it as being around for Thanksgiving, but didn't realize it was from 1972 and the last Thanksgiving with my grandfather. Thanks Mom.
In an ever increasing attempt to domesticate Joe, we taught him how to make stuffing for Thanksgiving. Granted we didn't let him near the knife to cut the bread, but he did do a good job in sauteeing the vegetables and mixing the final ingredients.
Here's a picture of a cool tree that we found in Reims when visiting Pommery. Not sure if it's a good enough picture, but can anyone identify it ?
Alas, we could not fly home for Thanksgiving, so we decided to drive down to Switzerland with friends from work (Andrea, Tim, Joe, Jim, Theresa, Gaby, and Irma). In this picture you can kind of see our chalet in the upper left corner. The connection to the Chalet is that when Andrea and Tim worked in Geneva last year, Tim's boss had a chalet that he let friends stay over the weekends - it reminded me a lot of the cabin in Owen County, quite frankly. The place was pretty huge - the only problem was that it had some low ceilings and beams - so my head is banged up a bit.
The food was great. Although we had two turkeys, we cooked the first one and had meat left over (we cooked the other one later in the day). We also had a corn souffle; brie/spinach/artichoke dressing; regular dressing; a fruit cranberry compote; a 'unknown' french squash soup, mashed potatoes, gravy - the usual American meal, but difficult than usual to get the ingredients.
After experiencing transportation hell in bringing all that stuff up the hill, we did manage to find a sled, and jerry rig something together to get stuff back down the hill. Granted the comforter did not really make it down in the same condition that it started, and it wasn't like it was a smooth ride all the way down, but we did manage to save a couple trips in the end.
Seems one of the regular visitors to the Chalet is this fox, who stopped by about an hour after we arrived to see what was cooking. Seems the fox has been around for sometime, since we later found some pictures of him/her a younger fox. I suppose it's not a bad idea to hang around some humans and look cute.
So if you haven't gotten the trend of this post, we had three HUGE bags of food - nicely organized into refrigerated, frozen (as in turkeys), and dry goods. The last one was about 75 pounds in a suitcase that really didn't roll too well in the snow. The distance from the car to the chalet took about 30 minutes (Jim says it was an hour) and was a bit of an incline. See attached photo to get some sort of idea . . . the chalet is the highest one on the hill just over my right shoulder - I'm not surprised if you can't find it.