Gobble, gobble!

Happy Snow Day everyone! Here's a look at the view from my place earlier today.



Just as well that we were home-bound today. It gave me a chance to recover from our annual 0T1 Christmas bash. Jamie and I hosted this year, and it was lots of fun. It'd been a while since we hosted a large dinner event. This year, I took over turkey duty from Barry which made me quite nervous; after all, he'd done such a great job for 3 years running that living up to that kind of standard is tough. Nevertheless, we pushed ahead and got ourselves a 15lb free-range bird from Cumbrae's at Church and Wellesley (who was recommended to me by the nice people at The Healthy Butcher).

I got a turkey and stuffing recipe from a post-doc in our lab. It came out of the Canadian Living Christmas Book, so it was a time tested set of instructions that in the end were pretty easy to follow. I made the stuffing the night before, and the bird the day off. I think the biggest challenge was just dealing with the size of everything and finding fridge space. In the end, the turkey was deemed a success, and I feel like I've earned yet another cooking skill. In his ever-present geekiness, Jamie commented that having tackled the turkey allowed me to level up my proficiency in cooking (it's an AD&D or RPG reference so don't feel bad if you don't understand). There was so much turkey left over! I think Jamie and I will be quite sick of turkey before the month is over. I've already made turkey stir-fry!

The gift swapping was chaotic as usual. For those of you who read this blog who don't know how we do it, we draw numbers and then select gifts from a big pile in numerical order. The gift is opened, and the person after has the option to pick from the pile, or steal from one of the people before them. A gift can only be stolen once per round to prevent a gift from just going back and forth. So, you can see how getting a later number can be advantageous, and how everything can change in the last round. This year was no exception! A few hot items that got stolen more than a few times: Cranium, Krazy Karpet + 2 sled discs, and 365 Days of Duct Tape Calendar. Barry gave what I would consider the most altruistic gift: 3 books donated to children's hospitals across Canada. That item wound up getting stolen from Jia by Naana.

Lots of food, and lots of fun! I'm already looking forward to next year :D