Entries:                   

December 31st

Saturday, December 31, 2005

     From the end of November, through December and right through this weekend, it's  been all about the holidays. For us, that means cooking, dinners, parties, family and friends. It started on the 26th of November with the 'Ladies Christmas dinner' for Herbert's cooking club.

     You can find the photo page for that evening with the following link:

Men's Cooking Club Christmas Dinner

      The next Saturday we had our third white elephant Christmas party in Oberwil. Last year we all realized that the Sternen restaurant was getting to be too small for the growing group of players. We decided to have it at the Schutzenhaus instead.

     It turned out to be great! We had enough room to make a large circle with a small path to the center where the gifts were piled up. We could all see each other and everyone was able to see all of the action. Although we had a few people who tried to stash the good stuff, it was much more difficult to hide the gifts from being stolen.

     Here's a photo of everyone just before the game started...

     One of the hottest gifts of the evening was a wrought iron wall candle holder. This is Susie after she stole it from Elisabeth.

     By far the worst (and funniest) gift of the evening was a monstrosity of a painting. Most of us had avoided it because it was wrapped in newspaper and because it was so large. (Large gifts are almost never good!)  Apparently because it was Lorella's first time to play the game with us, she didn't know this little bit of good sense and she went right for it when it was her turn. Dani helped her open it and here he is holding up for our viewing pleasure...

    Lorella tried to look pleased that the painting also came with a hard cover book and a deck of Jass playing cards, but her expression looks more like strained disappointment to me...

    The evening took a turn for Lorella when it was Dani's turn to play. He stole the painting from her and set her free to play again. I think that she was so happy that she even delivered it to him...

     In the last round, Lorella's husband Andreas (pictured above on the left) stole the painting back from Dani. He and Lorella's explanation was that they could really use the deck of playing cards. (For those of you in the States, a deck of cards cost about the same here in Switzerland as it does in the US. A few bucks.)

     I'm not sure what Dani's reasoning had been throughout the evening, but I'm going to guess that he's just a really nice guy who wanted to help people out that had been stuck with dead gifts. After the picture was stolen from him, he stole two shiny, blue, streaky vases that had been avoided by everyone the whole evening, effectively letting someone back in the game for the crucial last round.

     He tried to convince his wife Gesa that they were really beautiful. She had already been frustrated with him when he had stolen the painting. All she said was, "They're not going in the bedroom!" Here he is trying to persuade her to reconsider...
 

     Most of the organizations in Oberwil have some kind of Christmas party for their last meeting before the Christmas break. Our choir has a fondue evening in the community center. Herbert and I didn't have our camera with us, so no pictures. But, it was a really nice evening.

     The Trachtengruppe danced for half of the evening on our last meeting in December, and then set up tables for a small Christmas party. We each have a secret friend, whose name we draw in our annual meeting each February. Most of us receive something from our secret friend on our birthday, Easter and sometimes for other occasions throughout the year. At the Christmas party, it seems that everyone gets something. When we first arrive in the evening, we leave the gifts on the spiral steps leading up to the floor where we dance. After the party starts, a few of the members go get the gifts and distribute them. Here's a photo of us eating and waiting for gift time...

     On the 15th of December, my son Nick flew in to spend the holidays with us. On the first Sunday that he was here, we all got together to do our annual Christmas cookie bake. Herbert's son Yves even helped bake, although I think he was bribed with a dinner of homemade pizza.

     Natacha and I started the afternoon by making two batches of spritz cookies while we waited for Nick and Yves to wake up and show up.

     Here's a photo from later in the day, after all of the sugar cookies were rolled out, cut and baked. Yves looks exhausted and Natacha had moved on to a puzzle book. (Herbert and I were working on the pizza ingredients and I think Nick was out smoking.)

      After dinner, Herbert and I left to go to a small village Christmas get-together at my friend Marianne's. We were pleasantly surprised when we got back to see that the 'kids' had frosted and decorated almost all of the cookies while we were gone. They left us a few to do and you can see Herbert's hands on the bottom right of the following photo as he stirs frosting...

      I have to say that the kids were unbelievably creative in their decorating. Here's Nick holding up a Christmas ninja that he made...

      Maybe a ninja is not what everyone thinks of when they think of Christmas, but then neither is this cookie that Nick made to take back to a friend of his in Minneapolis... (By the way, I love the blue sandals!)

      We expanded our concept of Christmas and laughed a lot throughout the day. Here is the result...

     On Christmas day, we opened gifts as a family and then welcomed family and friends for our traditional Christmas dinner of appetizers, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn, cranberries and dinner rolls. Herbert's friend Kurt, who is in his Men's Cooking Club, came at noon and helped us cook this year.

     Here's a photo Nick took with the new digital camera that I got as a Christmas gift from Herbert...

     After Herbert's parents, his brother and his brother's wife went home, more of our friends came over and we had our annual Christmas evening of wine and left-over deserts. It was a wonderful Christmas.

     Every year on the 28th of December, the local cheese dairy has their annual Chässchnitte day. I can't translate that directly for you because it translates as 'cheese cut'. (Plus I'm sure I'm not spelling it right.) Basically, it's a get-together where they sell this typical dish that's served in the Swiss military called Chässchnitte. It's a mixture of shredded cheese, egg, etc. (I don't know the 'etc') that's spread onto a thick slice of bread and then deep-fat fried.

     This year, the wife of the cheese master is sick with cancer and he wasn't going to do it. But, he talked to the yodeling group and they agreed to host it with him at the community center. The normal guys who do the cooking for functions in Oberwil needed help and asked Herbert and I. Even though it was the last day before Nick was flying back to the States, we agreed to help.

     So, now let me try to explain this Chässchnitte with a few photos.

     Herbert and I were 'spreaders'. We worked with three other guys to spread the cheese mixture onto the bread. At first we started outside near where the vats of oil were that would be used to fry them. It was a freezing snowy day and we found that the cheese was freezing so we moved inside to do the spreading. Here I am with Walter, spreading and making perfect little mounds of cheese...

     The Chässchnitte waiting to be fried... (I can't even tell you how many hundreds of these we made.)

     The frying was done outside, underneath the parking lot for the community center in these large vats of oil...

     Felix is on the right, waiting to scoop the Chässchnitte  out of the oil, while Ruedi, the cooking boss, watches...

      Here's a photo of the finished product. Unfortunately, this was a pan of Chässchnitte  that we workers were eating and there weren't many left in the pan. Also, Herbert didn't realize that all the Chässchnitte were upside down when he took this photo so you can't really see the beautiful mounds of fried cheese. But, at least you can get an idea...

     And that brings us to today, New Year's Eve. As we do every year, we will ring in the new year with our friends at the Schutzenhaus. I'm sure I'll have photos to share in my entry next month, or, make that next year...

Happy New Year!!!