Christmas 2009

Five days of eating, drinking and unwrapping gifts...

But the eating took up most of my time by far... On Christmas Eve Shos and I went to Weert and prepared a nice meal for my parents. Due to a train delay we barely were in time to do some last-minute Christmas shopping but we managed to make it! Of course the food was way too much, but with some perseverance we managed to eat all of it ;-) Add a couple of glasses of wine to this and some presents and you automatically have a good evening.

On Christmas day we didn;t do a lot but kind of waited for my sister and her boyfriend to come over so we could all eat together. We did a very traditional Dutch thing called: "gourmetten". In the middle of the table is a little stove and everyone has his/her own little pan. Everyone also has a bunch of little pieces of meat and fish and some cut of veggies which you then slowly prepare in your own pan. Sounds kin of dorky but it is a very nice thing to do when you are with a group and nobody wants to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

Before we had food we distributed all gifts by means of several games and after dinner we played more games with which you could steal presents from other people. Not everyone ended up with exactly the thing (s)he wanted so there was some vigorous trading going on at the end of the night.

The following day Shos and I worked at restaurant Parc de IJzeren where we assisted the Chef in preparing the food for that evening. It was a nice evening and after quite a few hours of work we ended the night with some well-deserved cold beers.
Because the restaurant closed for the following week, I was allowed to take home some meat that would otherwise go bad. Therefore I once again invited some people over the next day and we had more delicious food! Later that night we went out and got home way to "early"...

On Sunday my grandmothers visited us, so it was a day of sitting at home, talking and relaxing. We paid a quick visit to my sister's new house and had more food in the evening. After that Shos and I went back to Utrecht because I had to work again the next day.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Hastelafietstas,
Ruud