Winter Wonderland

Christmas arrived and went…This year we decided to do a joint Xmas lunch roast turkey with all the trimmings, wild rice salad, roast lamb and bread and butter pudding for dessert.
The No.53 crew had seen Jamie Oliver in action in his Xmas special and we were attempting to recreate the Jamie Oliver Christmas taste….

I stayed over at No 53 over Xmas Eve to help with the preparation, however, I don’t think I did much since Fazly had already prepared the roast lamb and Ninie and Najla were already preparing the stuffing for the turkey.

The Jamie Oliver Xmas show was interesting because there were a few things we didn’t realise in roasting a turkey. Firstly, the stuffing is made of bacon which is mashed up with lots of herbs and sage. We replaced this with mince meat instead.

In addition goose fat is also used….we replaced this again with our halal meat fat. The turkey feast is actually quite fattening if you think about it…even the roast vegetables is cooked using the turkey fat produced during the roasting process. The turkey fat is then used to make the gravy along with mashed vegetables and chicken stock.
Since most of the preparation was already done, we ended playing Rockband2 for the rest of the night. Previously we had an issue with the drum pedal (due to over playing perhaps??!!) which broke halfway during our session. This was replaced by a wooden pedal which Bob the Builder had made for our group.

The next morning, the roast lamb had been cooked overnight and the turkey was ready to go in….all 7kg of it! It was massive and with the stuffing it looked even bigger….
Whilst waiting for the turkey to cook, we chatted upstairs and there was a good atmosphere all round….i think probably more relaxed than Hari Raya (obviously!...we weren’t heading out to go for Mass/Church kan?!)

After about three and a half hours , the turkey was ready along with the lamb, wild rice and pudding. It was time for the carving to begin! Jamie Oliver made it look so easy but well done to Fazly, Ninie and Azril for carving the meat because it was a hard job to do…especially when we do not have the sharp carving knives like Jamie…..

We finally sat down for our lunch …and it was absolutely delicious especially the gravy which was amazing with the meat! And pudding with custard to end the meal was a great ending to a great feast…everyone helped out which was fun and enjoyable.
Once all the clearing had finished mainly consisted of Areel who did most of the dishwashing (bless him for volunteering) it was time to have fun….

We started out with Lips (karaoke game) and one of the kids who came to the house beat us all with her rendition of Bleeding Love –Leona Lewis where she scored over 1m points…..We comforted ourselves by thinking that the only reason she won was because her voices has not yet broken…(hehe u can tell we are all bad losers…hahah!)

We then moved onto the party game Cranium. Cranium is a game of various tasks which the team has to perform: it can range from game of charades, humming/whistling a tune, brainteaser questions or word puzzles.

My team (Jiden, Farhan and me) came last but we were just unlucky on the night with our dice throws, difficult tasks ( how is anyone expected to sculpt a california sushi roll using purple plastecine?!).

Areel, Najla and Aliza’s team were just lucky on the night and good guesswork by the girls. The highlight of the night is Areel performing Shakira’s song using the lyrics “Whatever…whatever…” and the girls still managed to guess correctly.
The last game of the night …was of course Rockband2….everyone had a go at playing it which was fun……Overall it was a fun night with good food and of course good company!

Will put up pics later...