Family Christmas Lunch

Another year when the weather got in the way. Last year we chose to meet about half way for all of us and have breakfast at the beach. Pancakes, egg and bacon plus croissants hot coffee was all organised. Warren and I went early to snag a table and set up, breakfast was for 9am, it was Sunday after all.  Thirty ks from here and the weather was awful, very windy so a very late breakfast was changed to our place.

Rock on to this year and Jason says that the weather cant be bad two years running so we try again but for morning tea and lunch. I cooked most of Saturday 
and it was raining, this time we went to Jason's house. I was doing the main course and saw green pickled onions and marinated mushrooms, trouble was opening the Bl........ jar. I used a trick i learnt in China, attack the lid with the point of a knife. As you can see, i had to attack it several times. I ended up cutting the whole top out using the steel knife that we won in A supermarket in Shaoxing. It was a collect stamps type of thing and when we had enough, I picked this big knife, it is great. Got it home by putting it in the suitcase.

On tooth picks I had green onions, ham, red caps and mushrooms, very Christmassy.

This is all the food that I had to pack, I was worried that it wasnt enough. A rice salad with prawns, a chicken roll, heaps of chicken wings, roast pumpkin pies, two Costco salads and smoked salmon on crem cheese and rounds of bread.

Warren and I had left overs for lunch chicken wings and salad, dinner was scrambled eggs with some of the rice through it. Normal meals from tomorrow.

Salad days

Warmer weather brings salad and I bought some great looking ham this morning. We had to go to the shopping centre to activate our new bank cards. Yep, bank came through and we now have new cards.

Great ham deserves great salads so using Annie (thermo) I made a beetroot salad using tin of beetroot, a carrot, apple and spinach. Tasted good but the colour was not as fresh and clean looking as I wanted. The green of the spinach gave it a dull look. Then I thought I might as well make a potato salad using Annie, so I put in an onion and when that was minced I added about four potatoes cut into cubes. I intended to use Annie to cook them not to cut them. I added about a cup of water and used 80 degree heat and somewhere along the way I did press the reverse button which means it would not chop.

Hummm, except that I think I changed something which took off the reverse command. I ended up with definite mush and it tasted yuk or rather like very watery cooked potatoes, nothing like what I had in mind. I added some parm cheese but no, it had to go out in the bin. I ended up using a saucepan and doing it the old fashioned way.

The Annual Easter Egg Hunt

For about the last four years we have had an Easter Egg hunt for the grandkids. This year I bought colour coded packets not realized that the colours reflected the flavours. at least two kids enjoy the "hunt" more than the actual eggs and chocolate. The kids are allocated a colour to find so its fair for all.

Once again I over catered and so today Warren and I are eating left overs which includes quite a few prawns! For lunch we had half a dozen prawns and salad and will probably have the same for dinner with an Easter egg or two thrown in.

I was able to buy some prawns a couple of weeks ago so we had prawns, sausages (I bought bread and rolls as I thought the kids would eat them in a roll but no they didn't), chicken wings which I marinated as they didn't have any prepared and I also made a pizza,

Sausages and chicken are cooked on the BBQ which saves me a job, very easy dessert, ice cream on a stick and/or hot cross buns, only way to go. I have now got a few empty spots in the freezer but nowhere near being able to turn it off.