A Belated Hanukkah Dinner
Dec. 11th, 2023 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerSaturday night we had a belated Hanukkah dinner at our house. We made it belated because that allowed us to host it on Saturday evening, when we and our friends had time to cook and we had time to clean the house a bit. It also wasn't a super formal party. We prepared 4 things and asked everyone else to bring something.
The dinner party wasn't very large. We invited a 8-10 friends who either are Jewish (practicing or not) or are married to Jewish people or just like to hang out in the spirit of celebrating culture and faith. Two came for dinner, two came late due to a prior commitment (they told us they would) and joined us for dessert afterwards, and the rest sent their regrets.
Hawk texted this picture as we set the table to one of her friends who lives 1,000 miles away. "Chaag Sam... wait, something looks not kosher there!" she responded. 😂
That was also part of our informality. We served a platter of chilled cooked shrimp, which is tref (not kosher/not fit to eat under traditional Jewish dietary law), for those who wanted it. It was a concession to the fact that some people at dinner (a) have food allergies and have needed to branch into non-kosher meats to find reasonable protein choices, and (b) are not Jewish and found the foods matched to respect all religious and allergy prohibitions too limiting.
Well, after taking the picture I had to put the shrimp back in the fridge... because nobody came until an hour. It turned out to be a good thing that we planned dinner to be informal.
Finally one friend arrived, and we declared the party started. We lit the candles on the menorah and said a prayer and sang and song. Well, those of us who know Hebrew at least well enough to fake it said the prayer and sang the song. 😅 Another friend arrived partway through dinner, i.e. two hours late at that point, which was ironic because he brought the appetizer.
After dinner (and an appetizer as the 3rd course) we enjoyed dessert. I offered my sizzling brownies, which were surprisingly not as much of a fail as they looked when I took them out of the oven. Everyone tried them, except Hawk who's allergic to chocolate, and pronounced them still edible. Hawk had made a honey cake, which was also made with the flax seed egg substitution I used in my brownies but didn't experience a spectacular failure mode.
Later in the evening the other two friends joined us. We hung out together in the living room and chatted. Given the nature of our friends circle we expected we'd be playing games after dinner but, strangely, no games were played— or even suggested. Frankly that was a nice break, just relaxing and talking instead of having to "do" something otherwise to occupy ourselves.
We called it an evening when it felt late at night and multiple people were flagging. And it was late at night— after 11pm! That was another thing I didn't expect given the nature of our friends circle. As we all get older people are starting to bow out earlier. Our parties don't always make it to 11pm anymore without losing at least half the crowd.
The dinner party wasn't very large. We invited a 8-10 friends who either are Jewish (practicing or not) or are married to Jewish people or just like to hang out in the spirit of celebrating culture and faith. Two came for dinner, two came late due to a prior commitment (they told us they would) and joined us for dessert afterwards, and the rest sent their regrets.
Hawk texted this picture as we set the table to one of her friends who lives 1,000 miles away. "Chaag Sam... wait, something looks not kosher there!" she responded. 😂
That was also part of our informality. We served a platter of chilled cooked shrimp, which is tref (not kosher/not fit to eat under traditional Jewish dietary law), for those who wanted it. It was a concession to the fact that some people at dinner (a) have food allergies and have needed to branch into non-kosher meats to find reasonable protein choices, and (b) are not Jewish and found the foods matched to respect all religious and allergy prohibitions too limiting.
Well, after taking the picture I had to put the shrimp back in the fridge... because nobody came until an hour. It turned out to be a good thing that we planned dinner to be informal.
Finally one friend arrived, and we declared the party started. We lit the candles on the menorah and said a prayer and sang and song. Well, those of us who know Hebrew at least well enough to fake it said the prayer and sang the song. 😅 Another friend arrived partway through dinner, i.e. two hours late at that point, which was ironic because he brought the appetizer.
After dinner (and an appetizer as the 3rd course) we enjoyed dessert. I offered my sizzling brownies, which were surprisingly not as much of a fail as they looked when I took them out of the oven. Everyone tried them, except Hawk who's allergic to chocolate, and pronounced them still edible. Hawk had made a honey cake, which was also made with the flax seed egg substitution I used in my brownies but didn't experience a spectacular failure mode.
Later in the evening the other two friends joined us. We hung out together in the living room and chatted. Given the nature of our friends circle we expected we'd be playing games after dinner but, strangely, no games were played— or even suggested. Frankly that was a nice break, just relaxing and talking instead of having to "do" something otherwise to occupy ourselves.
We called it an evening when it felt late at night and multiple people were flagging. And it was late at night— after 11pm! That was another thing I didn't expect given the nature of our friends circle. As we all get older people are starting to bow out earlier. Our parties don't always make it to 11pm anymore without losing at least half the crowd.
