Christmas: the Dinner Party that could have gone Oh So Wrong

To spread the Christmas cheer, and after semi-pleading with the hubby to do this, James and I invited a bunch of my labmates and their significant others over for a traditional Christmas dinner. Since we are kinda poor right now, putting on a big Christmas party was my present from James. It was stressful and crazy at times, but it turned out to be one of the best X-Mas presents I have ever had.

James and I picked up Butch the Turkey at the grocery in the morning (If you are curious about the name, it came from the some Vinyl Café Siu sent me. Thanks Siu- it was awesome!). I had never really done a whole Christmas dinner all by my self before, so I was a little frightened. Our first surprise was when we took Butch out of the bag; he still had his neck. Hmmmm. What to do about that. After I unsuccessfully tried hacking it off with a knife, I stared at him for a few seconds like he was Nearly Headless Nick. “Quick, James,” I said “get the pliers!” And in a minute, Butch was neck-less. I thank my lucky stars Butch did not still have a head and feet.

We stuffed him and trussed him and popped him in our super dodgy oven, which is circa 1975, smaller than normal, has had the original range on top removed, and kept flipping the breaker until we plugged it into another plug. Did I stuff him right? Is the temperature in the oven OK? Is he too close to the element? Will he burn? This was all very stressful with 9 to eat that night.

As the afternoon wore on and James and I cleaned, moved furniture around and decorated, Butch started smelling better and better. So we just left him to do his thing in the oven. We got the potatoes peeled and cut, the apple crisp ready to go in the oven and nibbed a huge pile of green beans to be steamed in the last few minutes before dinner.

The guests started showing up at 6:30 and I put the potatoes on. Took Butch out of the oven and he smelled and looked amazing.

That is when things started to go wrong. Almost as soon as he walked through the door, one of the guests sprung some mild but unexpected Kosher requirements on me, so plans for creamed potatoes went out the window. But OK. No problem. I had used margarine in everything, not butter.

When I was making the gravy things started really to go wrong. The flour I bought turned out to be cream of wheat. (GRRRR. I need to learn Hebrew!) So, along with David, a Hebrew speaker at the party, I met the neighbors who had some flour, al beit, whole wheat flour. Beggars cannot be choosers. OK. Got flour. Make gravy.

As I was browning the gravy, the gas ran out on the stove. No problem. There is supposed to be an extra full tank on the balcony. I sent a couple of guys out to change the tanks.
But the extra tank of gas was empty too. ARGH! Son of a HOO HAW!

In the fifteen minutes of confusion, the potatoes finished cooking in their own hot water, but the giant pile of beans, they are still raw and now in my fridge. James and will have to be rabbits this week.

Despite all this, there was lots of food, nothing was burnt and only the beans went uncooked. The gravy was even tasty and Butch acquiesced to being carved with a large bread knife. Like a good host, I don’t remember tasting the food, but I hear it was good. David organized a quiz, which was a big hit and gave Assi and Amit something to argue about on their carpool back to Tel Aviv. Stockings were passed with David, square cushion under his sweater, acting as Santa. Israelis are not nearly as excited by the Jaffa orange in the toe as my Dad is.

Definitely the quote of the evening comes from Assi, who had been to New Jersey once during Christmas time and was complaining about the repetitive Christmas music in the malls. “I must have heard it 10 times,” he said. “This song about Gandalf the Deer”.

After the guests left, James and I cleaned up a bit and then rested our weary heads. This morning we called the landlord about the gas. The bad news is, we will not get gas until Sunday evening. The good news is, we have a behemoth pile leftovers in our fridge.
See, Christmas never happens exactly as you planned, but it always seems to work out in the end.