Pot Luck Lunch at work tomorrow (and Yankee Swap)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Tomorrow at work we’re having a Pot Luck lunch and Yankee Swap for our holiday celebration, it should be lots of fun…

I’m bringing my family’s traditional recipe Oyster Stew, and some home-made cast-iron-cooked cornbread (the only PROPER way to do cornbread)

The Oyster stew? well, let me just say when I make Oyster stew, it is OYSTER stew, it does not lack for Oyster content, many OS’s I’ve sampled have been nothing more than “Oyster flavoured Milk Soup”, thoroughly dissapointing

My OS, you could practically eat with a knife and fork :wink:

my secret(s)? well, I’ll let one of them out of the bag…
LOTS of oysters, usually I go fresh, but this time of year, I had to resort to canned oysters, SIX CANS of them, and about 1.5 gallons of “Cow Squeezin’s”, you stir this stew and it rolls with nummy oyster goodness…

It’s going to be hard to resist not eating it all myself tonight, but…no…must…resist…seafood-y…goodness! besides, letting it sit in the fridge overnight tonight gives time for all the flavours to mingle and intensify, home-made soups and stews are always more flavourful on the second day

The cornbread, I take a basic mix, add in the required milk (from a local dairy) and eggs fresh from our hens this morning, mix in some honey to taste, and cook it in a cast-iron pan

the PLL is going to be interesting, because in addition to some of the guys being avid hunters and farmers, we also have four staffers from Thailand, one from Indonesia, one from Cambodia (who incidentally is also an awesome Sushi chef), and one from the Dominican Republic on staff as well, should be a cuisine-rich lunch

One of the Thai ladies has a menu of Thai Cuisine she cooks up whenever anyone wants some delicious home-made Thai food, and of course, she’s being all secretive about what she’s bringing to the PLL and it’s driving everyone crazy, of course, she’s loving it, and enjoys taunting us and keeping us guessing… :slight_smile:

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I have never heard the term “Yankee Swap” before, although Google tells me it’s synonymous with “White Elephant Exchange.”

The oyster stew sounds wonderful!

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Basically, a Yankee Swap is this;

Each participant brings a wrapped gift, gifts are put into a communal pile, each participant chooses one gift, unwraps it, once all gifts have been unwrapped, each participant has ONE “Swap”, and has ten seconds to decide if they like their gift, or if they (participant A) like someone else’s (participant B) gift better, if they do, then “A” uses their swap to swap with “B”, “A” has used their swap, “B” still has their swap, but cannot swap with “A”, “B” can swap with “C” or “D” or “E”, etc… each participant has ONE swap to use