Talhams@Toulouse

Joyeux Noel de Toulouse!

France has many fine things it contributes to the holiday season: champagne, foie gras (for those who partake), Marché de Noel, festive streets, and Bûche de Noel along with gingerbread men dipped in chocolate. We adopted some of these French bits and added them to the mix of our own traditions. We worried that the girls would fret that we couldn't have all of the traditions we've developed over the years as a family. As always, they made us proud by embracing the new and celebrating what we could recreate! The Marché de Noel was festive and just steps from our apartment--lots of little shops in mini white huts to create a little shopping village. We went over opening night and found joyous revelers--mostly looking like they had stopped at one of the Vin Chaud (warm wine) vendors! It was a fun occasion to get us into the spirit of the season. We went to a farm market to buy a tree and jostled it down the streets packed with holiday shoppers back to our apartment. We found whatever "right" ingredients we could to make the cookies we decided it could not be Christmas without: spritz (without the spritzer), spritz-raspberry preserve sandwiches dipped in chocolate, sugar cookies, and snowballs. We had to place an early order at the market for our "bird" in order to have it for Christmas dinner, we bought the champagne, and purchased all of the right cheeses to make our traditional Christmas Eve fondue. Part of our dinner was missing since we couldn't have our dear friends the Gorham/Thiebachs with us--with whom we always spend Christmas Eve. We missed them as we sipped champagne (or sparkling apple juice!) and feasted on our cheese fondue, but most especially when Santa's Elves rang the doorbell and delivered pajamas. They even found us in France! Although we resolved not to make this a big Christmas--we decided to take the girls on a ski trip and limit "things" we'd just have to find room to pack when it came time to go home--it ended up bigger than it should have been in some ways but mostly perfect in all the ones that matter!