It's Beginning to Look alot like

Christmas!

So there were lights and trees up before Thanksgiving, but I decided to hold off just as we do in America.

Our Christmas tree isn't up yet, but here is one that I saw in the mall next to our house.

A little blurry, but I was in a rush to get and out of Carrefour aka. French Walmart.

Spotted Post-It War 2

 Surprisingly my blog gets a lot of traffic thanks to the post-it war, so I decided to join in on the post-it war.

Thanks to my friend, Allison, she sent me a pack of post-its! I was going to do a multi-color one but I didn't have enough time.

My husband was like "wow are house is just like the building at the Stade de France!" There is a train on one of the buildings, I just have never had the chance to take a picture.

Happy Thanksgiving !

In France, Thanksgiving isn't really celebrated. My boss scheduled a meeting for today and I was like "Thursday is Thanksgiving" and he said "Oh I know, but that doesn't mean you get the day off!"

My husband and I will not be celebrating Thanksgiving til the weekend. I am not sure if I am actually going to cook something. I might make a pie with the pumpkins I bought in Versailles.  But I really want us to go out and eat sushi, is that un-American??

Last year we went to an indian restaurant with our Korean friend, SK. Maybe we will do that again this year. Or maybe I will buy a turkey from turkish boucherie! haha a turkey from the turks.

 Also, this has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but I signed up to make dessert for our work Christmas party. They all said they wanted baklava, but I want to make an American Christmas dessert. I know I will be making buckeyes (for non-Americans, these are peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate), because my generous Amerian friends have sent lots of jars of peanut butter. I want to make a second thing in case they don't like the buckeyes (The French are used to nutella sandwiches and not pb&j).

Do you have suggestions on what to make ???

Baklava

I finally have some time to post a recipe for Baklava, that I know people have been waiting for !
The Baklava that I have known to make is the Turkish one (I wonder why that is, haha!) I usually make baklava for special occasions like the end of Ramadan or the Eid. But sometimes I just make it to make it.

There are two different kinds that I usually make : rolled up ones that look like catepillars and regular squared baklava.

Here is the recipe for the squared :
Ingredients : finely chopped walnuts, 250g of melted butter, and phyllo (usually 40 sheets)

1. Open up the phyllo, be careful because it tears easily 

If you are not fast at putting each layer on, cover the phyllo with a towel. Because it tends to try out fast.

2. Butter the pan, preferably round. and layer 8 phyllo sheets brushing butter on each layer

3. after 8 layers, generously put walnuts on top and then do another 8 layers and lightly sprinkle walnuts.

4. After the second 8 layer phyllo, place another 8 layers on top and add the additional butter. You might have sheets left, so save those for later, I will post the catepillar recipe soon. If you get confused about the 8 layers think about this : 1. 8 2. walnuts +8 3. walnuts + 8 4. Butter and oven

5. Cut square pieces depending on how small and big you want them. A sharp butcher's knife works best. Put in a hot oven at 350°F and let cook until tops are golden brown or almost burnt. Make the sugar sauce while the baklava are in the oven

6. Sauce : For every cup of sugar add a cup of water. For the baklava that I did below I used 10 cups of sugar. Boil the sugar and then simmer the sugar also add 1 tsp of lemon juice (this prevents the sugar from crystalizing), I just guess on the time.

7. Pour on top of the baklava and cover with aluminum foil and stick somewhere where your husband won't eat them. Baklava is good the next day.

8. and then enjoy!

Guess what this is : Pumpkin Answer

It's French name is potimarron and it's English name is a Red Kuri. Thanks to this website I was able to learn more information about the red kuri.

I decided that I was going to treat it like a pumpkin anyway. A food blog that I like to check out "The Pioneer Woman" had perfect ideas on how to make pumpkin puree and roast the seeds. The only thing I have to say is that the red kuri had a lot of water in it and the skin didn't want to come off.

I ended up making red kuri pogaca (like a scone/biscuit) but I put brown sugar on top, thanks to another recipe found on "Almost Turkish" (I will post the other pogaca I made later).

I also made muffins and roasted the seeds. I bought some more at the market in Versailles, possibly I will soup or a red kuri bundt cake! or red kuri pumpkin spice lattés - since the Starbucks here is way too cool to make them.

What do you do with pumpkin ?