What a Great Time of Year

This time of year we are all trying to cope with all the snow, struggling to get our Christmas shopping done, get a decent tree and get it decorated and for those who are working, trying to get thinks wrapped up before the end of the year. It can be a bit hectic.

That is why I am always a bit on edge before hosting a seasonal get-together but, the bottom line is, I like to have people over.

Saturday evening we had a seasonal pot luck supper for the board and staff of the Folk Festival. Few of us work closely together but we have served on the board together for varying lengths of time and I think we have a great group and super staff. We work together well but, we don’t often get an opportunity to meet in a social sense.  

So we have been getting ready. I have been freezing star shaped candle holders for our driveway all week, cooking and the house looks  - well... homey.

So there we were Saturday night, about 26 of us including our partners/ boyfriends/husbands/wives/significant others all jammed into our living room/dining room.

We had, beer, red wine, white wine and a non-alcohol punch – did I mention the beer, cold Big Rock beer – Traditional, Gopher, Grasshopper, Warthog and Winter Spice, lots of it.

I had prepared quite a few snacks to get things going. Everything from the regular cheese plate, to marzipan stuffed dates, a nice zesty salsa, crackers with chevre and jam and some crab pate but it was the dishes people brought that blew me away. We had Braised beef ribs, curried potatoes, Jamaican patties, gyoza, hummus, a tomato-cheese vegetable dish, a salad with pomegranates, a red cabbage salad, cookies, lovely artesian bread and chickpeas in curry. The table was so full we couldn’t fit another plate on if our lives depended on it.

There was a line up in my dining room, people were chowing down in every corner of the living room and almost everyone went back for seconds and thirds.

And, we had conversations. Lots of them. We talked about knitting, music,  Universities, Laval’s football dynasty, books,  education, badminton, how our generation just seemed to fall into our jobs, photography, print making, Québec cheese, the second world war corvette fleet and submarines. It was great.

As people drifted away into the night we tried, unsuccessfully to recruit floor hockey players and talked about how we should do it all again, and we should.

I love having people over but there is something about this time of year that really make it special. We are all gearing down a bit, being a bit reflective, relaxing – whatever it is, it just seems to work.

Do it again? Any time.

Come to think of it the floor hockey team is coming over the 29^th.