My First Christmas Eve as Hostess

I was quite excited. This was to be my first foray into actually hosting the Christmas Eve festivities. Being the youngest means you have a special place in the jigsaw puzzle of family and hosting family get togethers is not usually seen as part of that puzzle. Truth be told it probably has more to do with every other family member being known as far superior in the cooking arena.

I was about to prove them all wrong. I had the perfect menu planned. An oil fondue! It was foolproof. Who does not fancy a fondue?

There was chicken, beef, peppers of every colour, button mushrooms, large chunks of onion and cherry tomatoes. I had an array of dips all made from scratch. No buy in a carton and stick on the table dips for my Christmas Eve spread!

After attending a Christmas Eve service with all the well known Christmas tunes being sung in a blue grass vein we headed over to my place for the fondue. My father helped transfer the heated oil into the fondue pot and I arranged the food on my lovely festive looking table. My sister was in charge of lighting the safety gel under the fondue pot.

The directions for the safety gel weren't all that clear but I said, "Just rip the lid off and light it." No doubt I was being a bit sarcastic about it because it seemed rather obvious to me. But my sister was being ornery and said something like, "I don't think so. I'm sure we're supposed to have another part." My house, my rules so I won that little argument.

My dad put the fondue pot on the stand. My sister, all the while muttering about how I'm wrong, struck a match and lit the safety gel. Swoosh! Lickety split we had flames shooting out of the gel surrounding a fondue pot full of oil. Chaos and panic quickly ensued and then the insanity began in earnest.

Everyone was rushing around doing absolutely nothing constructive. I was yelling, "Don't burn my house down!" My father somehow in all the crazy bedlam managed to remove the fondue pot from the flames. At least the oil was safely out of the picture. Flames were still shooting out of the gel and my parents yelled, "Get the salt!"

In unison my sister and I yelled back, "Get the salt? I thought you supposed to used baking soda!" So, as unbelievable as it may sound we had a heated family discussion about which kitchen ingredient to use to try and douse the flames. Parents won. I grabbed a 2 kilogram box of salt and dumped the contents on the fire. Science lesson: fire + salt = bigger fire! The salt ignited when it hit the flames. The salt added a chorus of ominous popping and hissing sounds to our already frenetic surroundings. Worse, I now had flames licking at my ceiling. Yikes!

I yelled at my mother to leave. I figured one of us should survive. She simply replied, "No, I'm staying right here with you guys." At the time I thought she was being ridiculously stubborn!

My father yelled, "Throw it out the window!"

The rest of us yelled in unison, "Are you crazy? We'll burn down the neighbourhood!"

Then he suggested we throw a blanket over it! This too was quickly nixed.

I frantically ran into the kitchen grabbed a large pot, threw a pair of oven mitts at my sister and practically tossed her the pot and told her to cover the flames. The look she gave me was priceless. I have this image of her flapping her arms, shooting dagger looks in my directions, and yelling incomprehensibly. But, she did it and she managed to douse the flames in the process.

What a disaster! But, at least my apartment was saved.

After the pandemonium subsided we retired to the livingroom where we drank wine and made a Christmas Eve feast of vegetables and dip. Not quite the elegant Christmas Eve I had envisioned in my mind. We certainly had a good laugh though over the entire debacle. We also learned that not one of us is very good in an emergency situation.

That night after everyone had left I wandered back into my kitchen. I was greeted with a mountain of salt on the table, one dead fondue pot and one equally dead dutch oven. What a mess!

Although my first attempt at hosting Christmas Eve may have been a bit of a disaster it was memorable!