haiku and tapas

Perhaps no one has captured the essence of the Hippo Place better than this runner-up Haiku by Tomaso:

Ancient Latin and modern words
Mountains, deserts and cities
The world is captured in these pages

This year's xmas party was held at the clubhouse and the game was a Haiku contest about the Hippo website. The food theme was creative tapas. For her guests, the Hippo prepared manchego cheese with quince paste, along with sardines and surrounded by olives; artichokes and Norweigian smoked salmon garnished with cubes of feta cheese and more olives; cannellini with sundried tomatoes tossed with red onion, rosemary, thymes and sage and a pinch of lemon; and pan fried linguiça. For the main course, the Hippo made a chicken tagine with carrots, eggplants, zucchini and turnips, topped with garbanzos and fire dried raisins. Her guests brought oven baked brussel sprouts, pan fried garlic mushrooms, sushi variety, chorizo stuffed in dates wrapped in proscuitto, lamb chops, stuffed mushrooms and eggs. To wash it all down, we had 2 bubblies, my favorite Coppola Director's Cut Pino Noir, a Thai mangosteen (passion fruit) rose, and a sangria of strawberry soda and tempranillo. Since we're celebrating 3 bathdays as well, I've ordered a 10" chocolate raspberry cake from Copenhagen, with a pear pie and egg tarts. We even made turkish coffee. And the hostess presented gifts for the 3 bday celebraties, 2 fossils from Maroc, a Touareg shrawl, and a pair of fingerless woolen gloves. The bathday boy and girls blew their respective decades candles (a 5, a 4 and a 3). Since every Hippo party had gifts for the guests, she offered each a small xmas gift. Then the game began with every one reciting their Haikus, written about the Hippo website. As usual, D and M won and received a gift of notebook and pen. How appropriate. For the 16 seater clubhouse theater pleasure, we watched the first 3 episodes of Fawlty Towers ("manuel towers, thank you, have nice day. you, orallymen, you work. who is man with beard? thank you very much for the beautiful gift. after coming here, leaving my 5 mothers and 7 brothers. que? He's from barcelona"). The day ended with several rounds of billiards.

Another year, another xmas bathday party, another clubhouse party. They just get better and better.



Xmas 2013 Clubhouse pictures:

And ...

Haiku winners: