Christmas Fare

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!  I had waaaay too much to eat & drink, of course ... and have eaten more today.

On Fri night, we had a BBQ here and my parents (who had driven up from Canberra) came, along with my brother, his wife & their 2 kids.  Also, my friends M & C (my Mate of Honour & his partner) came along.  I was under strict instructions from my mother not to go to any trouble, it was to just be a simple BBQ as they were all (well the family members, not my friends) then leaving when it got dark to take the kids to see the Christmas lights in Five Dock.  As Friday was my first day off work, and I spent a couple of hours of it at the hairdresser (more on that next post) I didn't really have time to go to much trouble.  But we did have yummy cheese & crackers - oh, how I love cheese-  my famous tuna dip, much much better than it sounds ... and then sausages and marinated chicken kebabs on the BBQ.  When I said previously that I do all the cooking in this house, that includes the BBQ by the way.  I also made a green bean & tomato salad with a red wine vinaigrette, and a leafy salad with semi-dried tomatoes and Parmesan shavings.  There was no time or room for dessert.

However, I was in charge of dessert for the next day and I was making a pavlova, so I did have to make the base before everyone arrived on Friday.  Here it is just about to go into the oven.  I know, not as smooth as it should have been.

And my trusty mixer (I call her Joan, because that conjures up images of a no-nonsense old CWA lady who makes awesome scones, cakes, lamingtons, etc), who really did the hard whisking work there.

This was all I had time to take pics of on Friday.  But here is the finished product pav, just topped with whipped cream (again, thanks Joan) and fruit - at my brother's house, just about to serve.

It cracked a bit as it cooled down, unfortunately ... but it tasted beautiful.  Wish I'd taken a shot of the marshmallowy meringue centre but we were all scoffing it down too quickly to think of that.  My husband ate 3 pieces.

Earlier in the day, it was all food as well.  I made scrambled eggs for our first Christmas brekkie as husband & wife.  Then my parents came over & we had a champers, then they drove us all over to my brother's house.  There we had delicious crusty bread with yummy, crumbly vintage cheddar and the most delicious ham.  This was just for grazing but was yummo.  Then we had a late sit-down lunch/almost dinner, around 4pm, which consisted of roast chook, with a lovely baby spinach, avocado and orange salad, and a delicious potato, dill & mustard dish.  By this time I'd had several more glasses of bubbly and then switched to red and had a few glasses more!  We followed this with the pav and then eventually rolled home, where my husband & I spent the rest of the evening polishing off chips and the leftover tuna dip from the night before.  God knows why, we certainly weren't hungry!! 

Anyway, Merry Christmas all!  And just to finish off, here is the bike my niece Eve got for Christmas, complete with baby seat for Dolly.  I want pink streamers on my bike too!!

xxx