No.2: Warming the house

Last weekend my daughter Amy and her boyfriend Kent had a housewarming BBQ which provided an opportunity for me to try out some more recipes from the book.



Their house is up at Thomastown and they've bought it and moved in more than six months ago, so the housewarming's taken a little time to organise, but hey - better late than never. They're both very much into gardening, of the 70's hippieish permaculture variety (think "The Good Life"), which is slightly challenging since they're on a subdivided block and have no back yard. So they've dug up the front yard and replaced it with heavily mulched veggie patches interspersed with fledgling fruit and olive trees, and a few flowers. It's really fabulous - everything's booming, and it's so good eating home grown organic produce. The most excited I've seem Amy and Kent - and Cody - was a few weeks ago when I arrived at a moment when they'd just discovered a crop of new potatoes. They were all up to their elbows in dirt, feverishly pulling spuds out of the ground, and if they'd been gold nuggests they couldn't have been more pleased.



So, back to the housewarming BBQ. Knowing that most of the guests would be in their 20s and some (including our host) would be decidedly blokey, it seemed appropriate to go for something tasty and substantial. My contributions were chicken tenders with coriander pesto (page 72), pork cutlets with rhubarb strawberry sauce (page 84) and avocado, cucumber and tomato salsa (page 80).



These selections were all pretty darn good and well received by the multitudes. Mind you, I did request Kent to hold off from cooking the cheese kransky and other naughty things until after the low fat options had been offered (which he kindly did, ignoring the mournful cries of "but where's the kransky?"!) I doubled the quantities for the chicken and the pork, and also doubled the pesto and rhubarb/strawberry sauce accompaniments - with the result that the meat and chicken got eaten, but there was heaps of pesto and sauce left over - the quantities are huge already! Everyone seemed to really like it all, but I do have a couple of suggestions for improvements. The pesto is really nice, and also works well as a dip for crackers, but I think would be even better with a little ginger in it. And I halved the amount of sugar in the strawberry/rhubarb sauce recipe - thought it might come out like jam. Half seemed about right.



For some reason we didn't manage to get any really good shots of my food (a poor pic is available on request just to prove I really did cook it!) So I've decided to share with you a photo of the desserts, none of which I made and none of which meet Heart Foundation requirements. But then, the Heart Foundation does say that we need to distinguish between "everyday foods" - like those in the BBQ cookbook, and "occasional foods" - like these desserts. A little of what you love - occasionally - is OK and possibly even good for you. So here's a great pic of Amy's childhood friend Alexandra, who came down from Canberra for the housewarming, with Amy and Kent's gorgeous though a little old and slightly incontinent dog, Cookie, whom they saved from certain death at the dog shelter when they moved into their house. Cookie has brought a lot of happiness into their lives, and all she craves is love and affection - and maybe just a smidgeon of that dessert!