Pastry Update: First Quarter

After Week 3 at Cordon Bleu, we're already a quarter of the way through our first semester!  (Wow time flies!)  Before arriving, I often wondered what kinds of pastries the chefs would start us on.  After all, how basic is "Basic?"  So, here is a review of our first three weeks' pastries.  The basic of the basic!

Leçon 1

Basic Pastry starts with doughs, and with reminding us that we really are doing everything by hand - no tools allowed (excluding our scale and knife kit).  So, we dove into the first week with a demo of basic flour, butter, and egg-based doughs: Pâte Brisée (for savory pies), Pâte Sablée (for large tarts and for shortbread cookies), Pâte Sucrée (for tartlettes, or small tarts), Pâte à Foncer (for sweet pies), and Damier (checkerboard-style cookies made of chocolate and vanilla shortbread dough).  The practical was only the Brisée, Sablée, and Sucrée; and I did really well!  See: my Petits Sablés Nantais (shortbread cookies) look pretty good!

The chef's shortbread cookies (in the center)

My shortbread cookies

Leçon 2

Chef Jocelyn demonstrating whipped doughs:
Our first experience whipping by hand

We continued the week with Whipped Doughs, machines still outlaws in our kitchen.  These included Génoise (sponge cake), Biscuits à la Cuillère (Lady Fingers), Biscuit Roulé (spiral cake with jam), and Dacquoise.  In the practical we tried our hands at Génoise and Lady Fingers, learning exactly how under-developed our pastry muscles were.  We even purchased huge balloon whisks to aid in our hand-whipping of egg whites into a meringue, but even then it was excruciatingly exhausting.  My results were pretty nice, though, and Chad loves the Lady Fingers so much that he wants me to teach him how to make them.  Great!

The Chef's Genoise (right) and Spiral Cake (left)

The Chef's Dacquoise (usually used as the bottom for cakes)

My Lady Fingers

The Chef's Lady Fingers

Chad thinks they are so tasty!  (These are mine, again)

Leçon 3

Italian Meringue meant the return of the
huge balloon whisk

Next up were the creams: the bases of many a French pastry.  The Cream Demo consisted of Crème Chantilly (whipped cream with icing sugar and vanilla), Crème Patissière (pastry cream), Crème Anglaise (English custard cream), Crème Bavaroise (Bavarian Cream), Crème d’Amandes (Almond Cream), Crème au Beurre (French Buttercream), Ganache, and three types of Meringue: French, Italian, and Swiss.  The demo was almost hard to watch, knowing that each of these creams required a lot of whipping, and that the Balloon Whisk was going to return to our practical.  The Meringues, especially, would be difficult.  In the practical we did the Italian Meringue twice, the Pastry Cream, Crème Anglaise, Ganache, and Almond Cream.  All of mine turned out very well, even the Italian Meringue.

Italian Meringue involves whipping hot syrup with egg whites.  “Doing everything by hand” also means “No thermometers allowed,” so when it came time to test our syrup for the correct temperature (121 Celcius), we did it by hand by scooping hot boiling syrup out of the pot with our fingers (which had been iced).  It was scary, but we all made it through blister-free.

Leçon 4

Lesson 4 was the first time we would actually assemble something in our practical, rather than just making the elements of a pastry.  Lesson 4: Tarts.  Chef Jocelyn demoed three different tarts with three different techniques: Tarte au Citron (lemon tart with meringue), Tarte aux Pommes (apple tart without cinnamon – score!), and Tarts aux Fraises (strawberry tart).  Our practical was simply the Lemon Tart.

The Chef's Apple Tarts

The Chef's Lemon Tart

The Chef's Strawberry Tart

The practical went very well, initially.  We were to make most of the pieces: the crust (from Leçon 1), the lemon cream, and the Italian Meringue from the previous lesson.  The tart also contains almond cream, which we had saved from a previous practical.  For me, the crust went smoothly, my almond cream looked awesome, and the lemon cream turned out really well.  When it came to the Meringue, though, something just wasn’t working out for me.  I ended up failing it twice before it finally worked out, with the help of the chef.  I’m glad I wasn’t the only one – about half of the class had to re-do their meringue at least once, and many of us ended up using our third meringue of the day.  My piping was nice, though, and the tart turned out really well.

What was left of my Lemon Tart after dropping half of it 

The Chef came around and judged my tart very positively:  The crust could’ve been baked for a few more minutes, but it wasn’t bad, and my lemon cream had a great taste.  My piping looked really nice, and the meringue was a great color.  The positive critique made all the meringue whipping (and my really sore upper body) worth it, so I packed the tart in my cake carrier to take home.

The piping was nice, though!

Now, there’s something that has to happen at least once to everyone, and that day was my day: when I lifted my cake carrier, the pie slid out onto the ground.  Whoops!  I was glad it happened after the Chef had made his critique, and I caught it quickly enough to save half of the pie from falling.  It was still a lot to clean up off of my shoes and pants and knife bag; but it meant that Chad and I only had half of a pie to eat, which was a plus in the end (though it was super delicious!)

Leçon 5

Our fifth lesson was on rising doughs, and we were demoed Croissants, Brioches (white French bread), Pâte Feuilletée (puff pastry), and Savarin aux Fruits et à la Crème (a light little shortcake with pastry cream, fresh fruit, rum syrup, and Chantilly cream).  

Rising doughs mean extra-careful time management,
being sure they all get time to rise properly

Savarins: the Chef's favorite!  They were really really tasty

In our practical, we just made the dough for Croissants, Brioches, and Puff Pastry (or “Flaky Dough,” as Chef Jocelyn says).  The dough was really fun to make, as it involved whacking the dough against the counter, swinging and slapping it, for 8-10 minutes straight.  It was loud in the kitchen, and we were all having a good time.  We simply refrigerated our finished doughs in anticipation for…

Leçon 6

Lesson 6, our most recent lesson, was the finishing and shaping of the doughs we made the previous day.  The Chef showed us how to do Danoises (Danishes), Pain aux Raisins (little raisin rolls, kind of like cinnamon rolls), Pains aux Chocolat (chocolate croissants, a favorite of my classmates when I studied in France), and a few different shapes for Brioche: Brioche Tressée (braided), Brioche Tête (“Little Head Brioche”), Brioche Nanterre (balls of dough in a loaf pan), and Couronnes des Rois (“King’s Crown” Brioche).  We would practical many of these, and I was really looking forward to it.

The Chef's raw Danishes

My raw Danishes (Ignore the reject I made
with the leftover dough, bottom center)

The Chef's raw Raisin Rolls (top), Chocolate Croissants(Center), and Croissants (by his hand)

My raw Raisin Rolls (top), Chocolate Croissants, and Croissants

The practical was the most fun, by far.  We removed our dough from the fridge and set to recreate the Chef’s shapings.  With the croissant dough we made traditional Croissants (which I accidently measured in inches rather than centimeters, so mine were monstrous), Pain au Raisins, and Pains aux Chocolat.  With the Brioche, we did the Brioche Tressée, Brioche Nanterre, Brioche Tête, and turned the rest of our dough into little balls with course sugar on top.  It was a great time, and the Chef was really proud of my work!  I even had enough leftover croissant dough to make fresh Danishes for Chad and I the next day.  Tasty!

The Chef's Brioches.  Round one at the bottom: Couronnes des Rois;
Left center: Braided; Right center: Nanterre; Top left: Brioche rolls
with candied fruits; Top right: "Mousseline Brioche"

My Brioche Nanterre

My Braided Brioche

The Chef's smaller pastries.  From right to left: Little Head Brioche
(None of them could stand like they are supposed to -- they're tricky),
Cinnamon Rolls, Brioche Balls with Course Sugar, Raisin Rolls, Croissants, Danishes

My Little Head Brioches:  All of them could stand!

My best Little Head Brioche -- The Chef was proud

My Brioche Ball with Course Sugar

My Pain au Chocolate

My Pain au Chocolat - Glad I came home with 8 of them!

My big Croissant - measured in inches rather than centimeters 

My Little Raisin Rolls - they look pretty darn good!  The Chef
was really proud of these, too.

The Chef's Danishes

My Danishes (again -- ignore the loser on the center right)

Uff Da!  It was quite the busy practical, with plenty of bread
to take home

With my Cake Carrier crammed full, I still had to carry some
pastries that didn't fit

Halloween in Ottawa

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  I love everything about it – the décor, the weather, the dressing up (especially the dressing up!), and the excuse to wear black lipstick.  I’ve always been a Goth-at-Heart, so Halloween has been my socially-acceptable reason to get a little dark.  Exhibit A:

Halloween 2011, before my hair was actually black

This year, though, Halloween falls on a busy time, precariously close to the deadline for Chad’s thesis.  So I started to look for a little Halloween event that we could walk to that wouldn’t take a lot of time so that we could get Chad back to work shortly, while still enjoying the season.  After all – I insisted that we pack our Star Trek uniforms so that we could go somewhere this week, so it would be kind of sad not to.

The spooky Heritage Building

Online, I found a list of a ton of things to do in Ottawa for Halloween: a Zombie walk, vintage Halloween party, Trick-or-Treating in the malls, and pumpkin patches.  One event sounded great and close: the Mayor’s Halloween party!  It was within walking distance and featured a haunted house fit for children (tame enough for me – I get scared pretty easily), pumpkin decorating, “everyone’s favorite characters” with candy roaming around, and horse-drawn carriage rides.  Perfect.  Admission to the entire event was a donation to Ottawa’s Baby Food Bank.  So we planned on getting dressed up, grabbing some baby food at the grocery store, and heading to this party.

We got there after a chilly 18-minute walk, and I immediately realized what I should’ve read between the lines:  we are in a huge city, so it is going to be really really busy.  And it was.  We waited in line for the haunted house behind probably 200 people, most of which were small children. 

The wait wasn’t too bad, though I felt that it was a little bit of a waste, especially when my plan was to get Chad back to work as soon as possible.  The Haunted House was held in the “Heritage Building,” a section of City Hall that used to be an old school.  It was a pretty spooky building, and they had lit the façade with green lights and decorated the windows with Jack-O-Lanterns and ghosts.

Some of the older members of the line
recognized us as Star Trek officers

We gave our baby food to the volunteers (who commented that I would probably die in there, since I was wearing a red ensen’s uniform) and went through the house.  It was really tame, but still cute.  Chad even got a little spooked by a kid that jumped out at us, and I got some candy from Trick-or-Treat stations along the way.

The rest of the night was a lot of waiting.  We were ushered to a long line for…something, and waited patiently as young children complained and ran around and ate candy.  People in line commented on our costumes in creative complaints, “Hey, if you Star Trek guys can beam us to the front of the line, you’ll win the costume contest!”

We discovered that the line was simply a huge Trick-or-Treating queue, so we eventually skipped all the stations and went outside where the pumpkin decorating tables were set up.  We each grabbed a small pumpkin, I drew a face on mine, and we walked home; freezing.

My favorite part of the night happened on our walk home.  As we were crossing a street, there was an SUV waiting at the light.  The passengers all leaned out of the windows and slowly rose their arms with the “Live Long and Prosper” sign.  We burst out laughing – it proved to me that Star Trek was popular in Canada at one time, after all.

Notice the age of most of the people in the background:
That is pretty representative of our night

We got home in time to listen to the ISU vs. Baylor Homecoming game and warm up with spaghetti and hot cocoa.  It was good – Iowa State won and we were warm and cozy.  The party wasn’t great, and was definitely aimed toward small children, but it was nice that we got a little Halloween fix.  Next year, we’ll just have to have an extra-awesome Halloween to make up for it.

Production Kitchen Duty

Each pastry student at Cordon Bleu has a few requirements on top of attending every class: One day on Production Kitchen Duty, one day on Demo Assistantship, and one day as Sous Chef.  I was terrified for all three of these, but had the good fortune to be one of the first to do every one.

Chef Philippe in a Lab Kitchen

First for me was Production Kitchen Duty.  This is how it had been explained to me:  Report to the Production Kitchen, the place where our chefs prepare all of the food for the coming day and get ready for Demos, find Chef Philippe Guiet, and do whatever he says.

Sounds pretty easy, right?  Well, I was worried that he and the other chefs down there would expect me to do things that I had never heard of, or do technical cuisine prep (like “turning vegetables”…I would have no idea where to start.)  So, when the day came, I crossed my fingers that the chefs would just have me crack 4-dozen eggs, and I was off to the kitchen.

I reported for duty, and was pleased to discover that one of my Group A friends was there with me.  We found Chef Philippe (who we had met during Orientation) and got our marching orders.  We were to prepare trays of pre-measured ingredients for chefs to use in Demo and for advanced students to use in Practical.  Piece of cake!

The only little problem we had was with exotic ingredients we had never heard of and with a few items on the list that needed to be prepared (example: a few different types of herbs and peppercorns wrapped in a leek leaf and tied with string).

I was also asked to slice strawberries, something I was very familiar with after working at Panera for a year. 

So the Production Kitchen was harmless.  One chef was rude and condescending to us, loudly arguing with Chef Philippe in French about why we even had to be there, how slow we were, and how we were taking up space.  I never mentioned to them that I speak French.  Another chef made fun of me for wearing white kitchen shoes, joking about how I’ll never ever keep them clean.  It was a great experience, though, and I was glad to see how a large-scale kitchen is organized and how it works.

This past Monday I reported for my Demo Assistantship and the chef simply said that he didn’t need me that day and that I could go home, so that was even easier.  I was just as nervous for that one, as it was for a Superior Cuisine course.

Being the Sous Chef was a piece of cake, too.  My job was simply to put a large bowl at each student’s station in the lab kitchen before they came into the room.

Demo and Practical

In “My First Day,” I explained how our orientation turned into a day of orientation AND our first class, without us knowing in advance.  The class I described there, a “Seminar” isn’t typical. We usually have two different class formats: Demo and Practical.

My time so far at Cordon Bleu has given me a new-found respect for science students at ISU.  Having never been in a class that had any type of “lab practical” myself, I only imagined what it was actually like.  I can say now that I am pretty sure I understand exactly what a practical is like, and the nerves that go into a practical exam.  But, first things first:

Demo

Chef Jocelyn finishing off the Demo with some Chantilly
cream garnish

A demo always comes before a practical, though they usually are not back-to-back.  For example: Today I had the demo for rising doughs, and my practical is at 8:15 tomorrow morning.  About a third of my class is in their demo right now.  The order of classes rotates so that no one has an advantage (always having practical right after demo when it is fresh in our minds).

For Demo, all us Basic Pastry students, in uniform, sit in a large room that has a little test kitchen in the front, with a counter dividing us and the kitchen.

It opens with our chef taking roll call, giving us the agenda for the class, and explaining our Terms, usually new French vocabulary that is relevant to the lesson.  He then goes on to demonstrate five dishes (or so) while we frantically take notes on the procedure.  We are provided with the list of ingredients and title of the dish in advance, but that is all.  He explains why the recipe works, the chemistry that happens during the process, and different production scenarios. 

Chef Jocelyn Bouzenard without
his glasses

I really enjoy the body of the Demos.  So far we have only had Chef Jocelyn Bouzenard, and he is great.  He is lighthearted and funny, typically making little jokes while he is mixing, playing with his grasp of the English language.  Today, for example, we taught him the word “Smush”  (he was smushing the dough through his fingers to incorporate some cold butter), and he made jokes about it for the rest of the class.

There are so many of us in the room (almost 40) that it would be difficult for everyone to see.  Because of this, there are mirrors mounted above the counter where Chef Jocelyn works, and two monitors mounted on the walls, each with its own independent webcam.  These are surprisingly effective, but I still prefer to sit in the front row, and have for all but two Demos.

Once the Chef is finished and the 3-hour class is over, he invites us to the front of the room to take photos of the finished products for our reference.  We also take photos of certain steps during the processes, though these aren’t as synchronized.  Once everyone has taking a photo, then we all taste the final product.  I haven’t tried anything short of amazing in two and a half weeks, so we’re off to a great start!

Practical

Of the five recipes that the chef demonstrates, we are expected to do two or three of them in our Practical.  We are told which ones they will be during the Demo, so we have a little bit of an opportunity to study.  I like to take really really thorough notes on every recipe, but I know a few of my friends take more extensive notes on the Practical recipes.

Our class is split into three sections: A, B, and C, consisting of about 12 students each.  I am a member of Group A, so I have Practical with the same people every week.  I know most of them now, which has been great.  The groups are definitely a good friend-making tool.

Chef Hervé

The school has a few “lab kitchens” where we report for our Practical.  They are long, skinny rooms with a marble counter in the center and six stations on each side.  Each station is equipped with a fridge, Kitchen Aid (which we won’t use), tray rack, and one oven and range per two stations.  Sinks, ingredients, and things like bowls and baking sheets and parchment paper are at the ends of the room for everyone to share.  In here, we recreate the designated recipes.

There is one chef in the room while we do the Practical.  We have had three different pastry chefs: Chef Jocelyn (who does our Demos), Chef Hervé Chabert, and Chef Eric Jaouan.  While we all start to prepare our recipe, the chef circles the room, watching us, and walking on.  If we have questions, they come answer and help, but their main function is to evaluate. 

Practical can be intimidating!  The intimidation factor changes with the presiding chef.  For example, Chef Eric is really intense and negative, and kind of scary.  In his kitchen, I usually refrain from questions unless I definitely need his help.  Chef Hervé is my favorite: he is fun and vibrant in the kitchen.  He is supportive, but firm, and seems to really genuinely care about our success.  We’ve only had Practical with Chef Jocelyn once, but he was nice, too.  He wasn’t as supportive as Chef Hervé, but he was helpful; giving comments as he walked by instead of just staring and continuing on.

Our Practicals are also three hours long: 2.5 hours for cooking and 30 minutes for cleaning and evaluations.  It sounds like a lot of time, but so far we have all been pretty crunched toward the end.  When time is up, the chef walks around and we present our work to him, along with a written self-evaluation for things like our organization, hygiene, and process.  He then gives us comments on the work, and adds his own thoughts to our evaluation sheet.  My most common comments are, “This comes with time” and “Be Confident!”

When everything is finished and clean, we change out of our uniforms and take our baked goods home.  A Practical is exhausting, so I usually let my hair down and chill for the rest of the day while Chad tests the pastries.

My First Day

After a week of organizing the apartment, discovering our surroundings, getting a bank account and a phone and internet service, multiple trips to IKEA and time-trials of the walk to school, I was so ready for orientation.

Not too casual, not too formal for the first day

Tuesday, October 9^th, the day after Canadian Thanksgiving, was Orientation Day.  The document that the school sent me only had a few sentences on it, asking that I bring my passport, pay close attention to the huge amounts of information I’ll be given, and promising tea, coffee, and pastries…so I wasn’t really sure what to expect (or what to wear). 

I got cute in a casual dress with tights and flats, trying to avoid being over- or under-dressed for a brunch meeting at an international culinary institute, packed a small notebook and pen and my passport in my huge Marching Band uniform tote, and was ready to go.

Chad walked me to school, camera in hand, in plenty of time.  I was so excited that I couldn’t take it!  Once we got close to the school, we could see lots of freshmen approaching the building from every direction.  Chad snapped a First-Day-of-School photo, wished me luck, and I walked inside.

In the main lobby of the gorgeous little castle there was a line of students checking in.  I joined the line, passport in hand, and had nice little conversations with the students around me.  The girl behind me was also from the United States, so we had plenty to talk about until we got to the front of the line.

I was handed a piece of paper with my name on it in big print, and went up the grand staircase to have my photo taken for my student ID.  From there I went up the third floor to visit the office and pay the rest of my tuition, due before the end of the week.

Orientation time!

I had never met the Student Administrator, Sara Kim, but she and I had exchanged countless e-mails over the summer.  Once the office assistant took my name and Sara heard me, she immediately stopped helping the student in front of me and snapped her head in my direction.  “Erin!  Erin!” she whispered with giddy excitement.  I smiled at her, and she started frantically pointing at a card propped up on her desk by her monitor: it was the card I had written her with my first tuition payment, a cute little piece of stationary with a mouse on the front.  It was funny that she kept it on her desk, but I smiled and was glad that she enjoyed it so much.  I knew we were going to get along just fine.

After I was done in the office, it was down to the “Salle Cointreau,” the largest and fanciest demonstration room in the building, to begin the orientation.

The room was full of students!  Everyone had an assigned seat marked with their name on a large piece of paper hanging from the back.  Mine was in the front row, and when I got there I found a large white Cordon Bleu bag on the chair.  Inside was my “Student Kit,” complete with uniform, binder of recipes, and kitchen scale.  Upon sitting down I noticed something under my seat, as well: it was a large bag made of sturdy, clearly weather-proof fabric with three zippers and a heavy-duty handle.  It was marked “Wusthof” and I knew what that probably meant: a whole bunch of knives.

The orientation began about 10 minutes late, due to the long line of students in the office.  We learned all about the history of the school, what to expect in classes (including “the likely event” that we would all be cut or burned before the end of the program), our uniform code, and we were introduced to the chefs.  I could tell right away that I was going to love working with them: they were all so perfectly French!  They spoke in French amongst themselves and looked so natural in their uniforms.  I was so excited to begin my studies.

Next up was an explanation of our schedules.  We looked at a funny little calendar included in our binders, and slowly deciphered the school’s strange scheduling code.  The pastry students quickly realized, though, that we had our first class later that day, and that we were expected to show up in uniform, ready to go.

After a quick tour of the school and a stop in the locker room to pick lockers and try on our uniforms, I walked home to grab lunch and tell Chad all about orientation.

A few hours later, I returned to school for my first class – a surprise to all of us.  I gave myself plenty of time to change and find the room, and settled in with my notebook and pen.

The class was a “Seminar,” a rare class format at Cordon Bleu, in which we learned all about common pastry ingredients.  It was scientific and specific.  We learned things like the coagulation temperature of egg whites and egg yolks, how many egg yolks or whites or whole eggs it takes to fill a liter, the composition of flour and a few different kinds of chocolate.  We learned about gluten and its role in pastry, and drew diagrams of a grains of wheat and eggs.  We took down numbers and statistics: a Size-Large egg is 60 grams, consisting of 10 grams of shell, 20 grams of white, and 30 grams of yolk.  The white is 90% water and 10% the protein Albumin.  After three hours and over a dozen pages of notes, we were released for the day.

I went home and collapsed on the couch – my first day was long and full of more information than my brain was prepared to process.  Maybe that’s why they only gave us a few sentences on our flier – they knew that we’d need all the brain space we could get for the day.

I told Chad all about it and went to the sleep early – the next day, my first real class started at 8:15 am, and I wanted to be ready!  I knew it was the beginning of something awesome.

Life Without Internet

If there’s one thing that all the great chick flicks of the world have taught us, it’s the fact that “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”  Well, at the beginning of our adventure, Chad and I proved that this theory doesn’t just apply to ooey-gooey romantic stuff – living without internet for a week nearly drove us crazy.

The internet is one of those things that I always appreciated, but thought I could do without if I needed to.  

After all, information can be found in libraries, communication can be had through the phone or mail.  So, when we started looking for an internet provider a few days after moving in, I was totally comfortable with going a few more days without being connected 24-7.

Surfing the web in a University park

Our apartment is very close to a university campus, so about once a day we would walk to a coffee shop that was always full of college kids, I’d buy a coffee, and we’d mooch off of the free internet for an hour or so.  At home, I’d make a list of the things I had to look up or check or do to make sure that the time at Second Cup was spent efficiently.

Around Canadian Thanksgiving, for example, I would look up tips for cooking a turkey, pros and cons for baking him from frozen, etc, and Chad would answer e-mails from students and professors back at ISU.

Not having internet at the apartment was making us a little restless.  Every time we were curious about something or wanted to look up directions, we would wish we had a smartphone or internet.  Second Cup was becoming less and less reliable, since the students were slowly taking over and we would often walk by without a place to sit.  We soon tried different places within walking distance.  One was a park in front of a University building where we were able to get internet access for one day, then were locked out every other time we tried.

We also did not have a Canadian phone, so setting up our internet was a challenge.  I finally bought a silly little flip phone that is $0.75/month + loaded minutes, which I had to set up on the internet in the park that day.

We finally have internet!

Once we had a phone, things went more smoothly with the internet.  We called and called and called the same company, but they were being really slow.  They, like an apartment company and insurance company before them, refused us service because we are not Canadian, but were trying to “see what they could do.”  Finally we called a different company and they came the next day to install our internet.

After the guy came and installed it on Thanksgiving Day

Now, though I’m very behind, I am able to update you on our lives here. Chad is able to work on his thesis and consistently communicate with his professors and students.  We can FaceTime and Skype our friends back home, listen to Cyclone Football, share photos, and look up directions.  I am able to download and print important documents for school and learn about this great city.  Life without internet wasn’t comfortable, but it sure helped us appreciate all these things a little bit more.   

Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner!

My first day of class was scheduled for Tuesday, October 9^th.  I always kind of wondered why they would start on a Tuesday, but couldn’t come up with any real reason, so I put it out of my mind.

Flash forward to IKEA:  We were shopping and browsing and having a good time on our first full day here, and an announcement comes over the intercom.  It was a cheery woman’s voice explaining the store’s Thanksgiving hours and specials in the cafeteria.  “Be sure to join us on Thanksgiving, Monday, October 8^th.”

So THAT’S why my classes started on a Tuesday!

With this new knowledge, we knew we should celebrate.  After all, how often do you get to have two Thanksgivings in one year?  I never asked anyone if they have little cartoons of Pilgrims and Indians, too…I thought that might be a little rude.

When we got home and checked our mail, we found a plethora of Thanksgiving coupons waiting for us.  With coupons in hand (a few days later), we headed off to our local grocery stores to complete our Thanksgiving shopping list.

There are two grocery stores within walking distance of our apartment, Loblaw's and Metro, so we started at the bigger one with the better coupons.  Chad really wanted to try to cook a Butterball turkey, so we picked out the smallest one we could find (a whopping 15-pound bird!) and went from there.  He loves stuffing, so we stocked up on stuffing boxes for a steal, and I got the materials for homemade pumpkin muffins, crushed-Oreo-cookie-ice-cream-pie, and mashed potatoes with sour cream and gravy.  Sparkling cider rounded out our meal.

See:  "Cook from Frozen"

I made the muffins and pie a few days in advance between organizing the apartment and cleaning and researching the best way to cook a turkey.  We were surprised to find many websites who suggested cooking the bird from frozen, rather than thawing him in the fridge.  On taking a closer look, the instructions on the Butterball turkey wrapper also said to cook him from frozen, so we decided to give that a go.

Up until Canadian Thanksgiving Day, we had been living without internet.  The company we were working with fell through, so we called someone else and asked that they come to install our router as soon as possible.  “ASAP” was Thanksgiving Day. 

So, working around the possibility of an internet installment guy coming right before dinner was ready, we prepared the turkey, put him in the oven, and I started on the mashed potatoes while Chad played Zelda to pass the time.

The internet guy did come, but not so close to dinner that it was a chore to keep the potatoes warm.  We even offered him a pumpkin muffin when he was finished.

I taught Chad how to carve a turkey, though he let me finish the whole bird, and we scraped the stuffing out of him to serve.

Finally, we sat down to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  The turkey turned out great, some of the moistest breast meat I have ever had!  We had potatoes and gravy and the stuffing that came in the bird, pumpkin muffins, sparkling grape juice, and ice cream pie for dessert.  Life is good.

Plans for American Thanksgiving: Chad wants to make a pumpkin pie for dessert!  We haven’t discussed dinner, but maybe we’ll have ham this time: we had a lot of leftover turkey!  Here are a few more photos of our day!

So many muffins!

Playing Zelda to pass the time without internet

Peeling potatoes

Watching the turkey

Mashed potatoes from scratch!

He's DONE!! (and it only took 6 hours from frozen)

Making sure he's at a safe temperature

Showing Chad how to carve a turkey -- just like Dad taught me!

Sitting down to our huge meal

Yumm!  The meat was juicy, and the gravy, though it
was from a can, was really good, too!

Practicing after dinner

With the bones in the dumpster, we were officially done!
What a tasty meal, and a great way to start off our
Canadian adventure!