What’s Going On?

Thursday night was by far one of the most fun and entertaining nights with a group of friends to celebrate Christmas. The evening started out with a potluck. There was great food to be had and a surprise to me was a turkey that was seasoned just right.

My friend seasoned a delicious turkey and gave me the honors of carving the bird. When I sliced into the bird the breast meat seemed to be a little dry, but it turned out to be just right when the meat was soaked in the pan juice and drippings. The turkey was seasoned inside and out with salt, pepper, thyme, butter, a whole apple, and the kicker was Sriracha sauce. The Sriracha sauce is a Thai hot chili sauce named after the town of Si Racha in Thailand.

What made this dinner a pretty interesting one was that my friends and sometimes myself bring to the party some Asian dishes. This year there was some chow fun (thick rice noodle), chow mein (round noodle similar to spaghetti), and fried salt and pepper flavored spareribs. Some other interesting add onto the non-traditional celebration were sandwiches, ribs, and Waldorf salad. Don’t get me wrong the food was great, but just a very interesting palette when having to eat mixed flavors.

Following some quality time catching up with one another, we then began our White Elephant gift exchange. What we did was very simple. Each person that brought a gift picked a random number out of a cup. We then went in numerical order. The person with the lowest number started and chose their gift. In this case it was me. The second person would then go after I had gone and has the option of choosing a gift from the pile or stealing a gift from someone else that has already opened their gift. Since I was the first one the second person could only chose from me to steal from or select a new gift. This would go on until the last numbered person selected their gift. However, the twist to the game is that a gift could only be stolen twice and there after it has been stolen twice, the gift cannot be stolen again. The other twist to the gift exchange was that the first person to have gone has the option to steal a gift as being the last person if he/she so chooses. After that the gift exchange is finished. At the end of the swapping, I decided to keep my gift and end the game.

As gifts were being stolen and passed around for someone to check out the specifications, we all partook of some awesome laughter. It’s been a year since the last time we have done something like this and it’s just full of fun and just great times. If you haven’t done a gift exchange with your family, friends or co-workers yet you should do so quickly. When Christmas is over the people that are closest to you should set up a party where you get together to have a similar type of White Elephant party by playing the same type of game, but with gifts that you no longer want from previous years or something that may be of value to someone else. It’s fun and it’s guaranteed something to be remembered. The negative aspect of this is if you steal the gift from someone that really likes the gift, You will never be forgotten and you will be eating out of a trough come the next party.

Pictures of the holiday party can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.