Almond Prize

At Thanksgiving everyone feasts and then waits for the rice pudding with raspberry topping to be passed around the table. The person who lands the hidden almond in their bowl gets a prize. This is a very, very big deal. The entire serving bowl of rice pudding will be consumed until the almond has appeared, and that almond is extremely coveted.

This year everyone was served their first helping of rice pudding by Dr. Peds to ensure fairness of distribution. The almond did not appear in anyone’s bowl, so I decided to take things into my own hands rather than pass that serving bowl around again and have a catfight over who got the biggest spoonfuls into their bowl.

“I will be distributing the next round of rice pudding!” I called out! “Everyone can line up in height order from tallest to shortest to receive their next helping!” It was a loud and crazy scramble, and made for a hilarious video! Mr. TOF was very excited to be first in line! Cousin Elizabeth was sadly last, but I made it up to her later by giving her the serving bowl and a spatula to get every last drop of pudding out.

The Banana ended up with the almond! She was so excited!

Sometimes the almond prize is really great (one year it was a remote control helicopter!) and some years it is just silly (the last time The Banana got the prize it was a chocolate football, which did not impress her and she regifted it to her older brother for his birthday the next day).

The Banana might have good luck at finding the almond, but she doesn’t feel she has good luck at finding the almond on good prize years! This year the prize bag held a one of a kind piece of artwork created by the Devious Snail at family cabin weekend — a log decorated like a bird with red spiky feathers on top of its head! The bonus prize was a wooden pen set from the 1985 Fargo Moorhead Chamber of Commerce. The Banana did not take her artwork back to college with her.

However, you should have seen the cousin ruckus when that unique artwork was pulled from the bag! It was a riot!