Every 2-3 months, we like to do what I call "cooking experiments". This is a simple idea: we cook some food and make some drink we have never done, usually from another part of the world. We usually invite a few friends to participate, but we cover all associated costs for such an event. It is often an all-afternoon affair with an ulterior goal of getting to hang out with people we esteem or value, or new friends we'd like to get to know better. There is honesty around food and light chatter.
The experiment itself revolves around a theme. We've done parts of the world: Brazilian, Russian, Australian, Indian, and African, among others. Whichever theme we choose, we spend the week-of learning a thing or two about the culture and the food, and listening to music from the region, or queuing up movies or film about/from the area. We also look up native/traditional recipes (or staples) and assemble some options to choose from on the day of the event.
On the day of the event after our guests arrive, we consider the recipes and vote on a snack, main dish, dessert, and/or a drink to make that afternoon. Then we all go shopping for ingredients and then spend the afternoon preparing the food. Background music is according to theme, and will fix time for the movie or film selection (either while we eat or while we wait for the food to cook). We talk about that region and anything interesting we might have learned, whatever. Once, some guests even dressed up to the occasion in attire befitting the theme! These are fun events.
I started doing this tradition 4 years ago; my wife has only been around for three such events. It started for me as a way to learn how to cook well, where I enlisted friends to help me out. Participants enjoyed it, so we decided to do it regularly. We used to have games too, but because of how involved the cooking can get, there is seldom any time for that.We plan to keep this tradition alive for as long as we can, hosting various people from time to time.