help needed New years eve food and games

morwenna

Chop an onion, celery and red pepper and fry together until soft. Add 1tsp turmeric, 1tsp cumin and 1tsp dried chilli with 1 tbsp curry paste. Add a large can of chopped toms, and 1/2 pint of veg stock, about 2tbs tomato puree and the same of mango chutney, 4oz lentils and some lemon juice. Stir it up & put in slow cooker - cook for 8ish hours on low.

This serves about 4 so double it.

We play charades, you could do 2 teams of five.

Hope it goes well, merry christmas!

inkie

Why don't you play a DVD clip, and formulate a list of 20 questions about the clip - we did this with a clip from brassed off the other week - it was a right laugh. The other thing you could play is to get too seperate packs of cards. Dish one lot out, and then keep the other pack for the leader. Have s small number of wrapped token gifts. The leader goes through their pack of cards, and the people who are playing check their cards. If they have a corresponding card, this is then handed in and they select one of the gosts off the pile. This carries on except when all the gifts have gone off the pile, you then 'claim' them from other players, and at when the game ends (i.e. after all the cards have been gone through by the leader), then those who have gifts then get to keep them.
What about beetle drive, of see if you can get a murder mystery pack off your local freecycle.

Little_Miss_Naughty

You can always play the 'After Eight' game.

This is where you put an After Eight chocolate on your forehead (head tilted back) you then have to use your face muscles to get the chocolate to you mouth.

If you drop the chocolate you have to start again - the last one to complete the task does a forefit.

It is good fun after a few drinks, you can get some great photo's that your friends will pay you generously not to show anyone else.

Topher

A game that went down well, even with my rather withdrawn B.I.L. was the chocolate game. Wrap a bar of chocolate in layers like a pass the parcel, but tie each layer down with string, with several reasonably loose knots (if only adults are playing tie more tightly. Collect together Dice & shaker, hat, gloves, (a scarf & a glasses & false nose combo also looks good) a fork & a spoon. All sit in a circle and pass the dice & shaker. Whoever shakes a six gets to put on the gloves hat (scarf and glasses & nose) and, using only the spoon & fork begins to unknot & unwrap the chocolate parcel. Meanwhile the rest of the circle continue to pass and shake the dice. As soon as someone else rolls a six, the clothing, spoon & fork and parcel go to the persoon who shook the six, whether or not the first person has opened anything, or even got the added clothes on. The winner is the one to finally shakes the chocolate free of its last layer of paper. Stabbing and breaking the parcel is against the LAW! (as is cutting through the string.) it has to be unkotted. Usually when children are playing the adults can slow the dice shaking down a bit to give them a chance.
Still have a photo of B.I.L. looking very intense in his plastic nose and tweed hat, picking a knot apart with a spoon & fork.

We also play spoons, and now the fourth generation of our family regularly request it. Adults can be awful cheats, with one uncle using hidden threads and spare spoons up his sleeve to ensure he stays in the game, my sister has been known to stab opponents with her spoon to stop them getting theirs, it just depends how savage you want to get.

Enjoy
T

sandy2_2

Topher wrote: »

We also play spoons, and now the fourth generation of our family regularly request it. Adults can be awful cheats, with one uncle using hidden threads and spare spoons up his sleeve to ensure he stays in the game, my sister has been known to stab opponents with her spoon to stop them getting theirs, it just depends how savage you want to get.

Enjoy
T

Spoons, how do you play that, the only one I know is< 2 teams and each had to thread their teams spoon down the neck of their clothing, then out the bootom of their shirt, then the next person does the same so they're all joined together by a long thread. Is this the one you mean

Topher

Lay out enough spoons for all players, less one spoon. Place spoons in centre of all players. (usually in a line down the centre of the table.) take and sort a pack of cards so that there are only enough "sets" of cards to match the number of players. (i.e sort the cards into Aces, Twos, Threes... Jacks, Queens, Kings. then if there are say eight players, ensure there are only eight sets.) Shuffle the card sets selected for play & discard the surplus sets. Deal out the play cards so everyone has four each. The aim is to collect four the same, and rid yourself of any cards that aren't useful for you. Players fan out their cards and decide what is going to be their best selection. (this may not be obvious at this stage of this round) Each decides on a card to discard and places it face down on the table ready to slide across the the player to their left. The dealer checks everyone is ready (but doesn't necessarily ensure every last player has a card ready to pass.... in our family anyway) then gives the signal for everyone to pass.... (He/She says the word "Pass") Players have to slide the card they didn't want to within reach of the player to their left, pick up the card they are receiving from the player on their right, and make a decision whether or not to keep or discard the incoming card. (Bear in mind that the player to your right knows what card they've given you, and if you look too delighted may withold other similar cards to stop you from winning. ) Once a player has collected Four cards the same (only three if you're playing with children) He/She is entitled to take a spoon. (They can do this quietly & subtley, or obviously & quickly. Once the rest of the players see the spoons begin to go, they too can grab for a spoon, it becomes a free for all. One player will be without a spoon and has 1 penalty (our family start with three pennies or counters each so literally pay the penalty penny into the bank.) Once a player has had a total of three penalties they are out. When a player goes out, one set of cards, and one spoon have to be taken out too.
If there's any dispute about who took the first spoon, this person can be made to prove they had the correct number of "same" cards, it is the sort of game where people get jumpy and a false alarm can also attract a penalty if you want.
My long explanation sounds involved, but its a fairly simple, fast paced game, open to all kinds of cheating, surreptitious support given to younger ones, and need for a "poker" face. There have too been open fights between otherwise quite mature Grandparents for the possession of a spoon. A quick supportive adult can also ensure a young child has a spoon out of the general Grab if they want.

So no spoons down clothes in our game, except for the Uncle who would hide them up his sleeve... the cheat.
T

lightisfading

We played a fairly simple but fun game the other day, though it involves a small amount of advance planning. Everyone has to bring a matchbox with something inside it - as unlikely as they can think of! Everyone else has to find out whats in the box (by asking yes/no answer questions only.. ie 'is it made of plastic?') - whoever's box takes longest to guess wins. We played it the other day and it ranged from 24 seconds or so (my OH - a guitar plectrum) to 5.54 (me - dominoes ).

flowerofthewest

My family used to play a game called "crossed or uncrossed" when we had new family members round (young children/new partners etc) (it only works until you know the secret).
Everyone sits in a circle and a pair of scissors is passed round with the person passing stating either "crossed" or "uncrossed". People not in the know assume that this is a reference to wither the scissor blades are closed or open. The secret is that it actually referrs to the legs of the passing player (crossed or not). You do need to have at least two people who know the secret before the start of the game, and it usually takes a while (and sometimes some not so sublte crossing and uncrossing of legs) before everyone catches on to the trick.

A couple of others would rely on my parents being "mind-readers"

One game was "Black Magic" where one parent would leave the room and everyone would choose an item in the room for the other parent to project to the first. The first parent would come in and and parent who was IN the room would start asking them if it was different items. Every time it was wrong the first parent would say no to the question "is it ...?", and only say yes to the item mentioned AFTER A BLACK ITEM (hence black magic ).

The second one worked for years before we worked it out - one parent would leave the room and we would choose an item from three items laid out. The parent would then come into the room and proceed to tell us which of the three items had been chosen - WITHOUT any prompting from the other parent! - At least that's what we thought until we realised that when the guesser was Dad, Mum would cross her legs either to the right or left, or leave them uncrossed for the middle - and if Mum was the guesser Dad would hold his pipe to the left, right or middle of his mouth (if he was smoking a cigarette he would hold it in his right or left hand and in his mouth for the middle!). This worked well because Mum was a known fidgeter and Dad almost always fiddled with his pipe even when it wasn't lit, so we didn't see anything unusual. YEARS they did this to us!

Sorry for going on - these may not be suitable but I thought you'd like to know how gullible I was as a child

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year

Fi

Poppy9

Another easy game is "who am I".

Write out some names of famous people on paper and get the person to pick one out. Then the other players have to guess who he or she is by asking questions that can only be answered "yes" or "no".

Twig

We are having friends over for New Years Eve and I want to do something different with the food this year.

We normally have crips and nuts to pick at, suckling pig, salad and french bread, but I would love to do a homemade buffet.

The pig is done by the men on the bbq so that'll be the same but I could really do with some ideas for the buffet.

There'll be 9 adults and 8 kids :eek: and I am not a great cook so any ideas would have to be foolproof

Thank you