Our Secular Xmas Celebration

Dec 26, 2006 by Sheryl    1 Comment     Posted under: Main

Any non-Christian compatriots out there probably already know how difficult it can be to find stuff to do over Christmas. I believe the Jewish tradition would be something like movies and Chinese food, but in a small Midwest town such as our fair city of Champaign-Urbana, not even the movie theaters are open. You’ve got to create your own fun. So far since Friday we’ve watched three movies at home (Little Miss Sunshine, Superman Returns, and Curious George), but that’s just the beginning. Since the temperatures have been unseasonably warm, rather than let it snow this weekend, we let it fry. Deep-fry, that is.

We rounded up a few other grad students stuck here for the holidays and broke out our industrial-sized professional deep fryer and a gallon of peanut oil (naturally, purchased at Sam’s Club). The premise of “Will it Fry? Night” is, quite simply, you bring it, we fry it, whether or not that’s what the instructions actually advise. Last time we were perhaps a little more experimental—let’s just say fried pretzel snacks and Frosted Mini-Wheats do not taste that great. And before you start to worry about the state of our arteries, you will be relieved to know that we only do this once every few months. We eat healthier the rest of the time. I promise.

To summarize, in festive fashion:

On the night before Christmas, my true love gave to me

Six cheese sticks drumming

Five Jalapenos popping

Four chimichangas sizzling

Three breast tenders burning

Two golden egg rolls

And a taquito on a greasy paper towel.

Actually, we ate a lot more than, say, six cheese sticks and five poppers, but hopefully you get the joke. I played the role of fryer wench and martini-spill-clean-up-crew while Grant and everyone else beat a few classic games on the MAME arcade: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Golden Axe: Revenge of the Death Adder, and Metal Slug 3. Sadly, they called it a night before we got to Smash Brothers. I could kick all of their butts, my weapon of choice being Pikachu. Unless they chose Yoshi. It really hurts my game to get eaten and crapped out in an egg.

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