Hannukah Dinner on Christmas

R and I keep saying that we should tell our respective families that we are going to the other side of the family's place for the holidays and then take off to somewhere warm instead. Since I'm a terrible liar, the closest I could get was visiting Giz for a few days and then going to the Dominican for a week (flight departs in just under 6 hours - woohoo!).

Here's the dinner we had on Christmas. I'm still not sure whether this is a Christmas dinner or Hannukah dinner.

Maybe neither or a bit of both, mainly directed by a desire to share in the holiday festivities. This year, my uncle hosted.


Dinner was a joint effort. Auntie Takeout offered to "make" the shrimp ring. Giz brought an entire laundry basket worth of food. R and I...we were exempt, given that we spent the better part of the day travelling. Actorboy (my brother) played the part of starving actor. Baba was in charge of the latkes.

Despite earlier calls to Giz asking how long a turkey should be cooked after the turkey had been in the oven for the morning, my uncle's turkey was pretty good:


As is tradition, too much food was served. This almond crusted talapia was a likely culprite:

Perhaps the most important part of the meal was the latkes. There is quite a bit of variation in the composition, texture and flavour of latkes. My baba always blends the latkes to a mush-like texture.



First, she peels and cleans the potatoes:


Next, she cuts up the potatoes into smaller chunks:

This allows for greater ease of blending the potatoes. Then she adds onion, egg, flour, salt and pepper.


and the frying




drinks all around - this is always uncle's specialty.



and the carrot ring with broccoli



nobody is going hungry, that's for sure;




and yet another version of Giz's heavenly salad;



Here is evidence of Giz's insanity:



After dinner, we played a game. Baba was so funny playing, I had to film some of it. Without going into too many details, at this point in the game, each player was supposed to use one word as a hint to the group about a name written down on a piece of paper. Baba didn't like this rule, so she just made the game whatever she wanted. We all agreed because with her English language skills, she was likely to quit if the game was too difficult.

Sorry for the shaky camera work. I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.