End of Summer Slow Down

I don't know where it went, but summer flew by in a blink of an eye. The summer season was intense. A week of fireworks. 60 person barbecues. Six-course pintxos tours that end in massive food comas. Weekly pub crawls that end in massive hangovers. Opening a new reception and chill out area for the hostel. Friends coming. Friends going. Whew. Now that it's calmed down a bit I can take a few minutes to sit down and write about it all.

It's been quite an intense lifestyle change, working at a backpacker's hostel in the small, tourist-packed city of San Sebastián.

I've traded my apartment with an actual bed, my own kitchen, and bathtub that I could actually feel safe bathing in, for a mattress on the floor in a room the size of a closet, a kitchen I share with 40 other people, and waiting in line for the bathroom. It feels a bit like going from the real world back to living in the college dorms.

 

But I wouldn't trade it for the world.

THE OUTCOME! Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner for 14 in a Parisian Kitchen

I just wanted to give a quick recap for those of you who might be wondering about the outcome of our  little 14-person Thanksgiving dinner in a Parisian kitchen. Hehe.. well, here it goes...

As I quickly mentioned in my previous post, our 14 (actually 12 in the end) person Thanksgiving dinner was a success. The food was delicious, and the two turkeys *magically* cooked perfectly (thank you turkey gods!). The only thing that didn't quite cook completely... or bake, rather, was the sour cream apple pie. It actually almost set the kitchen on fire. It was 100% my fault, as I shouldn't have dunked the apples into a bowl of lemon water to keep them from browning before I put them into the pie. This made them WAAAAY too juicy, and as the pie cooked, sugary liquid oozed out over the crust onto the bottom of the hot oven. That turned into one hot mess (literally); the burnt sugar turned into embers and before I knew it, the whole kitchen was clouded with smoke. Whoops... hehe.

Aside from that, my game plan worked out just as I hoped, and I was able to enjoy the party, the food, the booze (of course), and even some of the apple pie.

Alice made a boat load of delicious appetizers... 

Bouchées de boudin noir with a touche of compote de pomme (blood sausage with apple compote)...

Cheese and potato puree with chives wrapped in phyllo dough and fried until crispy, tomato basil bruschetta, and bouchées de chèvre chaud with a tranche of green apple and oignon caramélisés (warm goat cheese with slices of green apple and caramelized onions). 

Quentin really helped me out by taking charge of the mashed potatoes. 

He even kicked it up a notch and made some "from scratch" cornbread.. which was a knockout hit. Surprisingly, not many people knew what cornbread was... although not surprising to me since I had a hard time finding cornmeal. It was gooood...

We spent the night drinking cider and wine and decorating our Christmas tree. We roommates thought it would add to our maison du bonheur (house of happiness) to have a tree that was created/decorated by our friends instead of hurting a poor little tree from the forest. Go green!

So now we have a colorful and unique Christmas tree... complete with a dead angel, melting ice cream, a Super Mario star, phantom, and a big blue snake being attacked by my rendition of Bruzer (just to name a few).

Christmas, here we come!