Purim Potluck

Before I write anything else, let me me make it clear that I am not Jewish, nor were any of my Jewish friends present at this potluck.  There was no offense meant towards any Jews, we were just wanted to have a good time.
So one of my roommates went home for winter break and came back with a very large ham. By "very large" I mean it was likely somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds.  In any case, it was much larger than the three of us could eat on our own.  The obvious solution to this problem was to have a party.  The less obvious part of this solution was figuring out a reason for having a party.  So we googled it. And by "it" I mean holidays in the month of March. Purim was the next closest holiday that was not on a school night (St. Patrick's Day was on a school night. I don't do parties on school nights usually).
Purim is a Jewish celebration in honor of Esther.  Esther was a Jew, who, through a strange set of circumstances ended up the queen to the Persian king. It involved the former queen refusing to dance (potentially naked, the text is ambiguous) before the king and a bunch of his very drunk buddies (they'd bee drinking for about 187 days) and a beauty contest that lasted about 12 months.  After she became queen, without the king knowing she was a Jew, there was a plot to kill all the Jews.  After some prayer and fasting and a couple banquets, an assault on the queen, and a huge gallows being built, the Jews were saved.  So now, every year there is a celebration of all this called Purim.  You can read rest the story in the Book of Esther in the Bible.  It's not very long.  In fact, it is read aloud at Purim celebrations and everyone makes noise when the name of the bad guy is said. Enough of a history lesson.
So we had this ham and we had a reason for a party.  So we decided to make it a potluck (less work for us!) and started inviting people. Potlucks scare me.  They are terrifying, so we found ways to make this as un-terrifying as possible.  We made the ham and Joy-friendly scalloped potatoes and when we set food out we set the GF food at the beginning of the line. That way, there was less chance of cross contamination.  And we asked people to be careful.  I didn't get sick. Which is always a good thing.  I like not getting sick.

LDK is cutting our very large ham.  She is the official meat-cutter in our house.

A very prettyful salad that someone brought

People waiting for the ham to be cut so we could eat.  There was more people, but I got distracted and forgot to take pictures. 

Our Purim cake.  For some reason blogger feels the need to orient it this way.  I don't know why, nor have a figured out a way to fix it.  Apparently they got funny looks at the store when they asked to have "Happy Purim" written on the cake.  Someday, if I'm bored, I will write about the appropriateness of the caterpillar (it's all thought out in my head)

So that is a glimpse of our Purim Potluck.  As life would have it, I did have a seizure in the morning and rearranged my knee a little.  Enough that it hurt and needed braced, but not enough to put me back on crutches. Some of you might recall that last time we had a big party at our house (Canadian Thanksgiving back in October...I don't think I blogged about it, just did facebook photos), I managed to have a seizure and completely dislocate my knee and was (supposed to be) on crutches for the entire preparation. I failed at using my crutches, my knee swelled up like a baseball, and my leg turned purple.  So I guess the moral of the story is, I need to be careful when planning big party type things. :)