Spinning the dreidle in France.

You all know that my last Jewish experience was a bit awkward- at the local Synagogue. I knew after that Channukah would have to be at chez nous instead!

It was a bit of a tight squeeze...eight people and a feast in a room made for two. But in these cold times, the more bodies the merrier!

The preparations began two days earlier. We put up the xmas tree and the menorah, both of which are not exactly conventional.

The Xmas tree is completely edible (except for the outline). It's made from 11 carefully moulded balls of chocolate, and one chocolate angel holding a chocolate candle to be consumed on the 12th day of xmas.

The menorah is even less conventional...I mean at least the xmas tree takes the shape of a xmas tree, whereas nine candles is where the resemblence ends with the menorah. But we did find a real kiddush cup, to give it a bit of a traditional kick!

(Gefiltafish magic!)

Channukah started on friday night, but we had our feast on Saturday. By 8pm the house was clean, and any furniture we didnt need had been re-located to the terrace. The whole place (possibly the whole street) smelled totally oily...in a delicious sorta way (obviously!). The menu comprised of gefiltafish (my first ever!), salad, tajine with couscous, latkes, risotto, bread, sufganiot (that's jam doughnuts) and dreidle shaped shortbread! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Sorry you guys couldn't come...(hehe)

It was a weird mix of people. In our little microcosm we covered most of the world (how PC) Japan, Taiwan, America, France and ummmm Australia?

Our microcosm lent us chairs, cutlery and crockery to be able to put this feast on.

We had ten bottles of wine, most of which were "tasted" by our good friend Amy.

For some reason, we all kept hitting our heads: i still have a bump on mine.

There were some engineering problems. the xmas tree kept dismantling itself and all the candles of the menorah caught alight (only 2 were supposed to be lit). No one noticed... must of been those bumps on the head!

A couple of late arrivals turned up at 1am to help us finish any leftovers. Unfortunately they didn't lend a hand cleaning up (hmph!)

But its ok cos we now, at 8pm Sunday, have a clean house once again, are about to eat leftovers for dinner (yumm i love leftoversssss) and start planning the next feast for Christmas!