Orphans’ Christmas
22nd December, 08
We had our annual “Orphans’ Christmas” party last Friday night and I think I may still be recovering from it today! What is Orphans’ Christmas you ask? Well it started a few years ago when my two BFFs and I decided to throw a Christmas party for our friends who, like us, don’t live in the same city as their family (hence the Orphans part of the name). The three of us would cook a big turkey for everyone, eat lots of food, have lots of drinks and somehow always end up playing Pictionary… badly I might add.
Through the years our humble little soiree has grown quite large. The party this year included 15 friends! All is fine and dandy you may think except this year, the other two founding members (my two BFFs who are foodies and can actually cook) have moved away, leaving lil’ old me (who uses her oven as extra storage space) to cook and feed 15 peeps. Eek!
I had to cook a raw turkey. Ewwwwwwwwww! All 20 lbs of him. I called him Frank. Frank and I got along for the most part. I remembered my BFFs last year “brining” the bird, so I googled the best I could about “brining”. Frank ended up taking a nice salty bath for about 12 hours with bay leaves and peppercorns. There were floaties in the brine. Ewwwwwwwwww again!
The morning of the party I thought myself a bit clever (pity da fool!) and decided to bake Kristine’s cookies from scratch. If I can brine a bird surely I can bake some cookies! The recipe itself was easy to follow and in no time I was quite proud of the shortbread cookies I had made (24 little cookies = a sink full of dishes?!). Then I decided to get fancy and melt chocolate on top of the cookies. So I’m melting the bakers chocolate in a bain-marie just like T.V. taught me and it’s looking good! I’m feeling Martha Stewart-esque and thought, hey maybe I should thin the chocolate a little bit by adding some cream. But for some reason the whole batch of melted chocolate seezed up and turned into a giant glob around my spoon (T.V. lied!). Good thing I had a bit of extra chocolate still left in the packet to redo the whole thing again.
I was smart enough to buy as many pre-made items as I can get away with for this party. Packaged gravy, cranberry sauce in a can… I told guests that I put the my “home made” cranberry sauce in a tin shape mold on purpose. I said the tin shaped mold was an ironic statement against the tyrannous reign of the mass production of our generation. Well it sounded good didn’t it?! They gave me a symPATHETIC pat on the head.
Frank in the oven - Check. Gravy bubbling away - check. Sweet potatoes tin foiled - check. Soup on the stove - check… Oh no wait that’s not soup! That’s the potatoes I’ve forgotten was boiling in water for the last 2.5 hours - oh crap! When peeps started showing up at 7p.m. I had an indignant look on my face and was covered in powdered gravy, powdered sugar and bits of Frank. Thank goodness no one expected miracles from me (yeah my friends know that I’m not a cook) so those who can just kinda stepped in to help.
In the end the party went without a hitch and we all had a great time! The important thing is that no one got food poisioning this year and yes we did end up playing pictionary!
Categories: Random.
Tags: Orphans christmas party.
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December 22nd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
What a scrumptious looking spread, and what a lovely tradition!(although perhaps Frank wouldn’t agree)
Nice job on the cookies, I think I’ll go all squiggly with the chocolate next time too!
xo
December 16th, 2009 at 12:19 am
[...] you who aren’t in the know. We host a Orphans Christmas very year since what like 2001. Last year’s party was a bit dicey since both my kitchen-handy gay husbands moved away on me so I had to do it all [...]