Thursday 9 May 2013

Today's post is brought to you by the letter.......

(do you remember Sesame Street.....?)
 then read on......


The bank holiday weekend was a busy one for us, as was the last week too. I guess this is our busiest time of year, the cricket is in full flow and from now until July the school matches for Number 2 son are added into the mix.

On Saturday Number 1 son played for the club 1st team locally and I was on taxi duty, Number 2 son and The Builder were in the 2nd team playing away....somewhere in Norfolk (I feel sure they told me where....)

But our village also hosted a boat show; I don't have a huge interest in boats or sailing despite living a stone's throw from a huge network of rivers and lakes (The Norfolk Broads). However it was billed as a huge event for our little village and the weather was very kind.

Little Miss cycled and I walked to the village green (she was on a promise of a chocolate ice-cream) and I had seen the signs for the paella party! The paella was good, not very warm, but tasty and prepared on the spot by our local deli - a super place for cream teas and plenty of other goodies.

Sadly the ice-cream shop had sold out of chocolate so cue one very miserable face and some dragging of feet!
Anyway we finished the day baking and planting a few garden pots, so it ended ok.

Sunday dawned and what a beautiful sunny day it promised to be - my flip flops made their first outing of the year. All 3 men were playing at the club so no transport was needed but we did agree to go and watch. We arrived at the ground just in time for the lunch leftovers, accidentally of course!
 I we managed to help clear away the quiche, new potatoes, salad, French bread, apple cobbler, cheesecake.... sadly I missed the cricket as I was busy filling my face! - Just helping out you understand!
A rare photo, no one's fighting!
As it was a more important match than usual a fabulous spread was provided which included a lunch and a tea, unfortunately the team didn't do very well and the match ended earlier than expected so tea was served an hour after lunch! They needed my help to clear it away again, happy to oblige!
We also got to meet this years overseas player/coach who is here from New Zealand for the season, with his young family, Little Miss was very taken with his 2 son's and is volunteer babysitter for the summer!

As Monday was a bank holiday and no cricket was planned (unusually) we decided on an impromptu barbecue and threw a few invites out to friends. It was a lovely warm day and was so good to see the kids, or more accurately the boys, not glued to a handset or screen! Cricket and table tennis was played in the garden and we had such a good time with friends,
a fair amount of wine was consumed also!
 
We used to have regular dinner parties with some of the friends but these have dwindled to nothing over the past couple of years; however we started to reminisce! We once held a dinner party themed on "1979", everyone had to arrived dressed accordingly for the evening, we had punks, a glamrocker, Mrs Thatcher and Margot & Gerry Leadbetter (the Good Life). They arrived to enjoy nibbles such as Twiglets, cheesy balls and Primula cheese artistically squirted onto celery (remember??). And drank a little Sherry to start. We dined on Prawn cocktail, steak Diane (with onion rings & chips) and Black Forest gateaux or arctic roll for dessert.
We enjoyed a 70's soundtrack for the evening whilst drinking Babycham, Cherry B (Calpol taste a like, who knew?) and Liebfraumilch and bitter for the men!

We had the best time and we're well overdue for another, but what theme? We decided on a letter of the alphabet, can you tell we were getting through the wine at a rate of knots by now?
 After a lot of research it seems that C is the best option so we will dine on - hors d'houvres of caviar on crisps (obviously ready salted, anything else would be silly!), starter of crab and cockle cocktail followed by chicken or chickpea curry. This is served with carrots, cabbage and coleslaw, and a sumptuous dessert of cherry crumble and custard or cream. All washed down with cranberry cocktails and cobra lager and ending with cheese and crackers, coffee or cappuchino. It's sounding good I know.....
We will be wearing corsets, cricket whites and crocs - sounding less good now hey?
The soundtrack will consist of The Cure, The Clash and mellow sounds later with The Commodores!

Our W evening may not be so good though, hors d'houvres are wasabi peas and Wotsits followed by a starter winkles and welks on a bed of watercress? Weiner schnitzel with wantons  followed by wagon wheels and (Mr) Whippy ice-cream , all washed down with whiskey and water or a woo woo. Maybe that's not your kind of evening but we were a little tipsy by then!
We would be wearing windcheaters and waders and maybe a wig.

But I'm sure you won't want to join us for the letter J, I may be wrong but all we could come up with hors d'houvres of Jaffa cakes a pudding of jelly all served whilst wearing a jumper, jockstrap or a jumpsuit!

No you're right, give that evening a miss!

Anyone want to join us, go on pick a letter......

22 comments:

  1. Sounds like a fun-filled (and food-filled...) weekend!
    I like the sound of C, possibly W, but not so keen on the J (although after a few glasses of 'juice' it might improve!)
    Myself and three friends used to meet regularly at each other's houses for dinner (when we were young and family-free - those were the days...); we had various themes and also struck upon the idea of letters - we had to cook three courses, each of which contained an ingredient beginning with whichever letters we had been given. A,B,C wasn't too bad, but we struggled when X,Y & Z came along!

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    1. Doing each course to a letter is a great idea, I love parties on a theme.

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  2. Liking the themed evening from the 1970's! That took me back some! The letter J would be a bit tricky - an evening of jaffa cakes, jelly and jam! As Miranda would say "Such fun!"
    June

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    1. It was "what I would call, a super soiree!"

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  3. Sounds like you had a great weekend. Lovely photo of your family together!

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    1. Thank you, I don't often get one of the three of them together & not fighting - I may have to frame it!

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  4. sounds like a fun group!!! love your theme ideas. we are not that creative yet...we just sit around and drink!

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    1. Well we do that as well, obviously!! That's mainly what we were doing on Monday and how the conversation happened - I blame the wine!

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  5. The Cure and Crumble and Crumpets--you are my kind of people!

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    1. Oooh crumpets, we forgot them; crumpet with spreadable chocolate?

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  6. I've never thought of theming dinner parties but then I was a bit worried by the thought of the themes the Shah might come up with, so maybe I'll abandon that idea!

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  7. What a lovely post.
    We socialise far less these days - must organise something. A group of us once dressed as the characters from Village People - I was the biker - moustache n' all. I looked like my biker brother !

    We try to host a Burns' supper every year fancy dress optional one friend looked like Rob Roy & another came in drag.

    Cricket teas look so tempting !

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    1. A Village People evening, I love that idea!

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  8. Look at your cuddly kids - I love that photo, so natural and casual. We have a (rare) photo of Tallulah and Jax hugging (I'd actually told them to) and I keep forgetting to frame it. Al the C music people are my heroes and remind me of my Uni days. is it always sunny where you are? seems to be!

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    1. I wish it was always sunny, but sadly not!

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  9. What a great idea! We should do more entertaining and socialising too, it's all too easy just to collapse in a heap after a week of hecticness (is that even a word??) xx

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    1. hecticness is very definitely a word in this house!

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  10. Your post made me smile and took me back to the 70's with sesame street and your 70's dinner party. The letter C dinner party sounds such a good idea,I think some other letters you might end up with very few guests!
    Sarah x

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  11. I feel very hungry after reading that post!
    I like the idea of the 1979 party alot.
    Hope this weekend is as much fun!
    Lisa x

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    1. Are you hungry for winkles and welks on watercress Lisa, or just jelly & Jaffa cakes?!

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  12. Hello Jay, sounds like you had loads of fun! Though it's a shame the chocolate ice cream had run out. The photo of the young ones together is very sweet.
    Love the dinner party themes - though the I'd give the whelks and winkles a miss! (I have to admit I love wotsits)

    To answer your question about the fruit trees, it's the apple and cherries second spring in the garden and though we had blossom on the apple last year there were no fruit. The cherry did have two fruit (!) but the birds got to them before me :o( They were from Lidl when they had them on offer and on dwarf root stocks _ though by the size of the cherry I'm beginning to doubt it but this year it's absolutely loaded with blossoms - fingers crossed. The peach was new last year and we didn't see any blossom - I'm hopeful this year. When I was in Lidl this weekend they had some tiny dwarf fruit trees at a good price - I'm wishing I'd had a pear.
    The robins have been working overtime gathering food for the little ones, I'm dying to have a peep.
    Have a super week.
    Rose H
    x

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  13. The 70's party sounds like great fun. Sadly I'm old enough to remember my parents "enjoying" that sort of thing at the time. I can still picture the maxi dresses and polyester shirts that were all the rage back then haha! xx

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