Dinner @ Hapa (for now) & Christmas Celebrations!

Dinner @ Hapa Robson (22nd December, 2008)

Hanging out with a bunch of work mates because I can't attend the staff party :(

But I GUESS it's not TOO bad that I can't attend it because I'll be in MEXICO ;)


Richard's (the homeless dude that lives in the alley behind Hapa) awesome creation of awesomeness.


The Land of Narniaaa.


With Maaji.


Bartender James, Camera-shy Ken, and...yikes, I forgot. Well, in my defense, he isn't a Hapa staff.


Ken doesn't like to take pics so much, lol.


Timoki, Me & Maaji.

Christmas Dinner @ Erik's (24th December, 2008)

Celebrating Christmas away from home felt weird and a little sad but my first white Christmas definitely made up for it!


By the fireplace.


Santa's Ding Dongs.


The dessert chefs! I'm holding an orange chiffon cake & Sue's holding an apple custard.


Pretty proud of my Google experiment ;)


Best eaten with vanilla ice cream & whipped cream!

After dinner, we played some Christmas carols (I actually got to show off my "amazing" piano skills... I didn't know I could actually play Christmas songs, it was a pretty good self-discovery) and soon after, Erik dug out his saxophone which was left untouched for 13 years.


The sax maniac. Ha-ha.


More musical talent. Together, we can create a band of very odd instruments coming together.


Pressies!!

Christmas Dinner @ Jay's (25th December 2008)

While Erik's Christmas dinner has more pictures of people than food, during Jay's dinner, it's really more food than people.


The only picture with a human in it.

When you have a family of cooks, it can get pretty crazy in the kitchen.


Kitchen atmosphere.

In two days, I actually baked 3 chiffon cakes!

I hate to blame Jason but.... I am going to anyway.

If you have a turkey, ham and beef to roast as well as a cake and meringue to bake and only 2 ovens in the house, it's easy to screw up SOMEthing.

Too bad it had to be my cake.


Lesson #1 learned: Do not bake cake with roasting beef.
Lesson #2 learned: Do not bake cake with roasting beef and leaving it to Jay to watch over it.

A good lesson learned though that it was very possible to bake a cake with a beef roasting. Miraculously, the cake doesn't take up any flavour of the beef.


Attempt #2.


I can officially bake an orange chiffon cake pronto.


Carving the turkey.


Carving the beef.


Turkey stock and mushroom soup... this was awesome, awesome soup.


The back bacon.


Passion fruit meringue by one of Jay's cousins.


And this is only one half of the amount of the glorious food put together by Jay and his cousins.

Darnit, blogging about food always makes me so hungry... am gonna go dig around for some grub now!

Next up,

MEXICO TRIP!