Jan 122012
 

 

in cricketing parlance, i have reached my half century, yesterday being 50 years since i drew my first breath. its been a good innings, a few false shots, a couple of streaky edges thru the slip cordon, some lovely shots of the front foot, lost a couple of my early partners to good catches and sharp run outs, but now with my current partner we are building a solid partnership and the runs are flowing…..a little too quickly!  With a bit of luck there are quite a few runs in us yet, not sure I will get a century on this wicket, not many do, but a good 70 or 80 will do me.

mind you this morning i am certainly feeling the effects of the bouncer I took on the helmet, my head is pounding and i seem to need lots of water.

my intention had actually been to let this one slip under the radar and make as little fuss over it as possible, but due to a technical oversight on my part, i failed slightly. what happened was that i got far too much seafood out of the freezer when i decided to cook a nice birthday dinner for sal and myself, so i was then forced to ask a few friends round to help us out with eating our way thru all the food!

i decided to cook tempura seafood and vegetables and darryl and nicole turned up with a couple of bowls of homemade sorbet for desert, john and tomo arrived with a yummy entree of fried pork meatballs and sal had made a lounge room picnic for the kids, we had beer, wine, sake and muscat to lubricate the evening.

it was fantastic to have tomoko show me the correct consistency and mix of the tempura batter, and her help in prepping and cooking the large amount of veges and seafood was invaluable, we had shiitake mushrooms, asparagus, eggplant and ‘cakes’ made with julienne carrots, zuccini and onion. the seafood was prawns, scallops and oysters.

so in the end i had a lovely birthday party, despite my intention to avoid one all together, doing what I love – cooking for friends that love cooking and eating themselves, lots of stories, laughs and that fantastic feeling that comes with sharing life with great friends.

for all the images from last night head over to our gallery, HERE