A day in the life least expected: Any way you slice it

If ever there were something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, it would most definitely be Marcel getting home from his most recent job in Hong Kong a full week earlier than expected ... in the name of his own health perhaps as much as anything else.

In a nutshell, he was blessed with the experience of sucking on more parts of poultry over the course of the last month than most people would care to suck on over a life time, including, for example, the chicken feet (see above), which, in his words, you simply ate by going "scchhlllooooooooooopp" ... delicate toe by delicate toe (though it seems they were kind enough to remove the claws beforehand).

Having thus overcome any potential poultry fears, the "let us give thanks that you've made it home with all your inner gastric tracks in order" celebration was necessarily carried out in accordance with traditional American Thanksgiving requirements, namely a bird - a very large bird. Having succeeded in Thanksgiving challenge #1: locating a turkey in Switzerland and being the gourmet chefs that we are, we successfully roasted up the best 7lb rosemary, basil and thyme bird you ever done had ... (don't mind the bite taken out of the top, that would be courtesy of the western-food-starved traveler).

There were, of course, the obligatory side dish mashed potatoes and stuffing as well, but we threw all apple and pumpkin pie traditions out the window ... all we were really concerned about were the not-so-traditional chewy American chocolate chip cookies -perfectly done ... a real rarity seeing as American brown sugar is not an easy bit to come by and without it they just don't turn out quite the same. Three cheers for a great boss who was generous enough to think to bring some back from his latest trip Stateside.

The real essence of the annual American gorge-and-give-thanks-you-only-have-to-eat-this-much-once-a-year-fest, however, is most certainly in the leftovers. While it took searching in no less than four grocery stores to find the one and only turkey available (meaning we wouldn't have cared WHAT size the thing was ... all in the name of Thanksgiving tradition!!), we really didn't mind that it happened to be a 7 pound beast for the two of us. I mean, really, we all know that Thanksgiving is hardly worth it without the turkey-swiss sandwiches for days on end afterwards. And thus, along with several packs of ever-so-meltable raclette cheese for open-faced sandwiches, we also made one of our all-time fav recipes, Thai pull-apart stirfry ... the only recipe that is distinctly better when made with leftovers.