Ghettogiving

This year I went to my first "Ghetto-giving," which was either the second or third one that has happened with the group of people up here. It's really a pretty simple idea- it's like ghetto thanksgiving. Everyone gets together and eats at a huge table, but you eat only non-Thanksgiving food. I guess the first one was held in a fairly ghetto area (incidentally, right down the road from where I live now), but the idea of it being ghetto Thanksgiving (food-wise) works well too. With the exception of a few dishes (namely SPAGHETTIOS- really?), it wasn't very ghetto though- a solid amount of time was spent making food, and most of it was disgustingly horrible for you and pretty damn tasty. 

I made a gold fever pizza. Yup, a pizza with gold fever wings (from the 99, if you're crazy/thin enough to not know), tons of gold fever wing sauce and cheese, topped off with blue cheese for dipping. It was glorious- WAY better than even I had hoped for. 

Cover a Boboli with a ton of chicken and sauce.

Cover with cheese.

Cook until it looks like this.

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good

Other highlights included Rich's cinnabon rolls filled with bacon:

prep stage

Al's honey BBQ and gold fever wing rangoons, pictured next to Jesse's sloppy joe, which I didn't eat:

Here's the hideous looking deliciousness he was putting in those rangoons:

Holly made a lasagna that was at least 8 pounds:

And Josh made the most disgusting mac and cheese I've ever seen/eaten/heard. He said he almost threw up when he was stirring in the 1 and a half boxes of velveeta cheese- the sound of the enormous masses of cheese coagulating onto pasta was so sickeningly gooey and heart stopping that he just couldn't take it. He also put maple bacon in it and covered it in crunchy onion ring thingies. I honestly didn't love the maple flavor in my absurd amounts of cheese, but it at least got points for being different. And the cheese, oh lord. If ever there was an example of "too much." Brutal.

I think Josh's face here nicely illustrates the feeling we all had at Ghettogiving. It was just eating, eating and more eating:

I think the total list reads something like: gold fever wings pizza, gold fever wings rangoons, honey BBQ rangoons, lasagna, mac and cheese, spaghettios, sloppy joes, bologna and cheese sandwiches, 7 layer dip and chips, bbq chicken nachos, some weird french toast casserole, bacon cinnabon rolls, oreo balls covered in chocolate, some weird chocolate/pretzel concoction, ecto cooler, and probably 10 other things I'm not remembering. 

Then we watched UFC. It was a solid night. 

As I get older, I realize more and more the importance of friends and not only creating traditions and yearly parties, but of having get-togethers that serve as our own weird version of normal holidays. My favorite of these, Thanxmas, is coming up next week for its 9th year. I hope Ghettogiving becomes a yearly tradition and something can look forward to. I didn't know some of these people, I only kind of know others, but generally this was solid friends getting together for a night of fun and laughs. It's becoming harder and harder to make nights like these happen, so I'm happy to welcome Ghettogiving into my life. I strongly recommend doing something like this to anyone reading this blog that wasn't at this party. Make something weird- try to show up everyone else. Get together, eat a ton. I guarantee good times.

currently listening to: Coldplay- "Mylo Xyloto"