And so the gorging begins...

Moderation is for wimps.

So, of course, John and I are planning a hulking great- AMERICA- sized Thanksgiving for ten unsuspecting folks here in Paris.

There are a couple of non-negotiable dishes at our Thanksgiving table, in particular, Martha Stewart's "Cornbread-Sage-And-Sausage Stuffing" and her "Brussels Sprouts with Vinegar-Glazed Red Onions".... The brussels sprouts shouldn't pose much difficulty, but the "cornbread" component of the stuffing has proven a bit more challenging. Usually we use store-bought, kinda-crap cornbread, on Martha's recommendation, but it is beyond difficult (frequently called IMPOSSIBLE) to find ready-made cornbread in Paris, let alone the junky kind Martha prefers. so we've been forced to make our own. This in itself was an endeavor-- tracking down cornmeal, buttermilk-- but the true disappointment is that when all is said and done, the homemade version is notably inferior to the corn-syrup-laden-junk-food we've used in Thanksgiving pasts...

I thought if I went to the Queen of Junk-food, the renowned Paula Dean, I could count on her for a recipe that would resemble the (admittedly delicious) cornbread I buy but once a year at the local ShopRite, but despite requiring epic amounts of butter and equally fatty buttermilk, the cornbread was under-salted and under-delicious. Luckily, good ol' Martha wants me to inundate my cornbread in pork sausage, eggs, sage, and happiness; so in the long term, it probably won't make too much of a difference. But, WTF Paula Dean?!? Consider me disappointed.

Worse-case-scenario: We'll just drown the whole thing in chutney and gravy. Boo-hoo.