Following up on the success of last year’s Christmas party for my group from work, I did it again. A few things were different. First, the gauntlet had been laid down over the bake-off, so as you saw earlier this week I made Krumkake. Let’s just say they were a hit. I have 9 cookies remaining, after having made literally dozens. Given the fact that there were 10 people at this little soiree, and I did not have any once I started seeing how popular they were, I think the team averaged 4-5 eaten cookies each! Second, I also cooked something hot in addition to providing cheese and crackers (all American ones, Triscuits, Club and Saltines, from my cracker bounty!) and nibblies. When I was in the US last summer with one of my colleagues, she had remarked after several different hot dips at restaurants that she loved them and did not remember having seen them on British menus nearly as often as they appeared in American restaurants. So I made (what I thought was) an enormous vat of crab and artichoke dip (think three packages of cream cheese and four containers of crab meat to get the scope of the scale of this thing) and I swear they left nothing behind, the entire thing went–and quickly! Finally, in addition to my contribution to the bake-off, one of the temporary visitors to the group offered to make and bring a Tiramisu. We nearly polished that off too. (I swear, I am am not a slave driver and I have no idea why they were all so hungry!) The best, though, was when people discovered that the hollow centers of the Krumkake were the perfect place to put the Tiramisu. Like me, my team is largely made up of expats and so clearly this sort of fusion had broad appeal!
Photos of the before and after:
(The dip was not out of the oven, nor had the Tiramisu arrived yet).
The Christmas miracle was that I ended up with more and better wine than I started with. Aside from a few generous creatures bringing a bottle each, one of the gang found an import wine merchant that had oaky Californian Chardonnay and brought me 6 bottles! Enjoying a lovely glass now… Happy Friday Night!
Not From Around Here 
Nice work! What a spread! I have cookbooks in England from here for the exact purpose of dinner parties with an American twist!
Looks like it was a great party; these people obviously understand the joys of krumkake; I am a whipped-topping-krumkake-filling guy myself.
But when I get there, I want meat, not crab- I am still a terrestrial carnivore.
Whaddaya mean you aren’t working them that hard? How can you run a lab without cracking the whip?
Everything looked scrumptious in your spread, but apropos of nothing, after reading all your blogs this week, I looked up Sodagreen on You Tube and they really are great! I am always open to new music, just wish I knew what they were singing in each song.
What’s that behind the olive bowl? Look like samosas.
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I have spent the last two days at work (Being on a quiet period of waiting on hardware/software – Yes I work in IT) reading through the whole of your blog, you can tell you have been here a while due to the number of bottles of wine increasing quite considerably on the previous year 🙂