Best of both worlds: Christmas and Hanukkah in Ox

It’s the holiday season, my favorite time of year, and before I go home to celebrate the holidays with my family, I got the joy of celebrating them with my England family. First was Thanksgiving (see previous blog) but then time for Christmas and Hanukkah!

First on tap was the OUWAFC Christmas Dinner. Soupy was kind enough to arrange for it to be at Café Coco’s, where she works, and we had a great two course dinner, wine, and cheap cocktails all evening long. Take that, a group of football girls, and Christmas themed fancy dress, and you’re obviously in for a lovely evening. There were varying degrees of effort (or lack thereof) on costumes, as to be expected. In the interest of full disclosure I will admit that I put about zero effort in, but my gingerbread pajamas (oh wait, pyjamas) were comfortable and that’s all I care about. My favorites had to be Soupy (as a very fat snowman) and Juice as a homemade star.

We had a few drinks before dinner and then sat down at the table to eat. When everyone arrived, I gave a Christmas toast (why do I always wind up giving the toast for football dinners??) and we broke the Christmas crackers. Inside mine was a horrible joke (so bad that I don’t even remember it) and an eye patch. So bizarre, but whatever. Then after dinner, while waiting for dessert, Liz decided to bring a West Point tradition to OUWAFC. At the West Point Christmas Dinner it is tradition to sing the 12 Days of Christmas, led by the senior-ranking member of the group. Sine I am a)the acting President while Kim is away b) the Blues captain and c) the highest ranking military member of the group, there was no way for me to get out of leading the song. So I did. It was fun. Or not.

Anyways, the food was really good, and after dinner, we just hung out in the lounge/bar area. Ben, the amazing bartender, introduced us to many new and exciting cocktails and we stayed at Coco’s until they were literally mopping the floors around our feet.

All in all, it wasn’t a crazy evening, no real shenanigans ensued, but it was a great night with an amazing group of girls and I had a really great time.

Not content to celebrate just one holiday, on Saturday night I hosted a Hanukkah party at my place and introduced my friends to their first ever Hanukkah. No Hanukkah is complete without latkes and sufganiyot and so I decided to attempt them both. I loaded up on potatoes and oil and got down to work. I borrowed a food processer from Neal in the hopes that it would make life easier in terms of grating the potatoes.

However, the food processor grated them too finely, which was not what I needed to the consistency of the latkes, and therefore I was forced to grate all the potatoes by hand. Lots of them. It was quite the little workout for my arms (after already going to the gym that morning and carrying crates of alcohol back to my house in the afternoon). Grating the potatoes by hand took about twice as long as I had anticipated so I started frying up the latkes much later than I intended to, but oh well.

Laktes are basically glorified hashbrowns. Grated potoes, onions, eggs, flower, and salt are mixed together and put into pattyshapes and dropped in hot oil. Cooked until they crisp up, they form nice little potato pancakes. It took a little over an hour to cook all of them up (making 4-5 at a time in two different frying pans), but all in all I made about 3 platesful (probably somewhere between 50-60 latkes). Everyone was starving by the time they were finished but before we ate we needed to light the candles.

I said a few words about the story of Hanukkah (sort of incoherently really) and then had Neal light the candles while I sang the blessing. I love singing but mostly in the house when I’m by myself. I don’t like singing in front of people but it had to be done! After the blessing and Maotzur (the song my family always sings directly after the blessing is sung) it was time to eat!! Latkes are usually eaten with sour cream, applesauce, or both, and they were as amazing as ever! After all the time it took to cook them it was crazy to see how quickly they were eaten, but I guess that means they were good and people liked them!!

After the latkes, I went back to the kitchen to make the sufganiyot, but not before teaching everyone how to play dreidel. I left them to their own dreidel playing devices only to find out that the guys had decided to destroy 4000 years of cultural and religious tradition by creating the game “War Dreidel” where instead of just playing the game, they made it into a competitive, combative, violent game. Boys will be boys....

While making the sufganiyot we had a bit of a scare considering that one of the ingredients in the directions (baking powder) was not listed in the list of ingredients. Since I just went down the list to make sure I had everything, I didn’t realize that I needed baking powder and didn’t have any. After a bit of frantic freaking out and a quick iChat call to my mother, I remembered that I do have baking soda which can be used as a baking powder substitute. I finished up the batter (the stirring of which made for another little arm workout) and heated up the oil for those as well. Sufganiyot are basically donuts, make with buttermilk, flower, sugar, and some vanilla. You take the batter and drop little blobs into a pot of hot oil where they fry up quite nicely. Its really hard to drop them in without them becoming completely deformed, but Soupy and Bonnie helped me and were expert sufganiyot makers. Again, those were extremely well received and eaten as soon as they were presented from the kitchen.

Thankfully, this marked the end of my responsibility for the evening and it was nice to just sit and relax with my friends, watch a bit of football (both kinds) and just chill. It got to be pretty late by the time everyone left but it was a great evening and a great reminder of the amazing people I’ve met here in Oxford.

However, my house smells very very strongly of oil and fried potatoes which is kinda nasty. Other than that, successful evening and lovely holiday week. Coming up this week is a lot of fun, so keep an eye on the blog for whats coming:

Thursday: Varsity Rugby match in London and Varsity Ball afterwards

Friday: Fly to Chicago, drive to Orland Park, Vicki’s rehearsal dinner (where I get to meet Brian McBride and, of course, see the best Basic Roomie EVER)

Saturday: Vicki’s wedding

Sunday: Fly home!!

Should be a good time!