The mess before the fun....
I gave you a sneak preview on Sunday of our Irish meal. Here, after a few good nights beauty sleep, is a little more detail. The food had all been prepared on the day before while I was on a day off work and the kids were in school. I had completely trashed my kitchen making brown bread, wrapping sausages in bacon, soaking sultanas in whiskey ahead of preparing a Baileys infused bread and butter pudding, chopping, dicing and slicing all the ingredients for the Guinness Beef pie, peeling about a million potatoes for the mountain of heavily seasoned mash and whipping copious amounts of cream in preparation for the Irish Coffees.
By the time the kids got off the school bus you couldn't see any kitchen surface and the floor was covered in potato peels and bits of brown sugar and egg shells. I'm not the tidiest of cooks. The whole "tidy as you go" idea just goes in one ear and out the other. Luckily it was a whole day before the guests were due to arrive. Just barely enough time to undo the chaos I had created!
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And so 24 hours, a tidy kitchen and an overworked dishwasher later we opened the door to our friends wearing every shade of green they owned. They came laden with Irish Whiskey and Guinness hats, printed jokes and crazy green floral arrangements! It was a chaotic, noisy, laughter filled house for the next few hours. The kids ran around screaming and having a ball while the adults raised glasses and toasted each other with the old Irish toasts I had found in a little book. The toasts had been written on small rolled up pieces of paper and placed randomly at each place setting. I had considered engineering which person should get which toast but decided it would be too hard and yet in the end every person got the toast that I thought matched them perfectly! The toasts ranged from traditional to cheeky and each person read theirs out loud to howls of laughter and cheering and the clinking of glasses.
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And so 24 hours, a tidy kitchen and an overworked dishwasher later we opened the door to our friends wearing every shade of green they owned. They came laden with Irish Whiskey and Guinness hats, printed jokes and crazy green floral arrangements! It was a chaotic, noisy, laughter filled house for the next few hours. The kids ran around screaming and having a ball while the adults raised glasses and toasted each other with the old Irish toasts I had found in a little book. The toasts had been written on small rolled up pieces of paper and placed randomly at each place setting. I had considered engineering which person should get which toast but decided it would be too hard and yet in the end every person got the toast that I thought matched them perfectly! The toasts ranged from traditional to cheeky and each person read theirs out loud to howls of laughter and cheering and the clinking of glasses.
The night passed in a blur of food and drink, kids running around and squealing over the Irish music coming out of the stereo. The Irish flag jellies seemed to refuel them and sent them on another sugar high race up and down the stairs. It was a brilliant night. Successful because of the great company and the effort they put in to sharing our culture with us. I can't wait for the South African and Australian evenings. Bring them on!!!
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This sounds like such a wonderful, memorable evening with great friends! I'd love to do something similar. Now you've got me thinking...what would I serve? Who would I invite?