Mexican Night - Arriba! 27th and 28th June 2015

Well, I've been pretty slack, it's now 20th July, and I'm only just writing about our fab Mexican night.

Poor old Justin decided not to come up at the 11th hour, as he had a drippy cold, and would have been miserable spluttering and sneezing and generally freezing in our big old house.

So, I went up alone, tried a couple of people for company, but at the last minute, so it was all just a bit hard.

I'd also arranged to be at Terry's around 10am as I was part of the cooking brigade, so that was another complication for company.

The usual suspects were at Terry's - me, June, Arlene and Chris.  Terry made us all a welcome coffee, and then we got stuck into it.

not sure what June is doing there

First off the house made chorizos.  Terry had specially ordered the skins, but they were too small... We tried coaxing them onto sausage machine spindle, but didn't really work

Terry about to put the skin on the sausage maker spindle

closer attention now

even June's finger doesn't fit properly

We tried putting the skins through water to open them up more

and it still doesn't fit

 Of course, we didn't give up, we merely made a skinless variety of chorizo, more like cevapcici

wrapped in gladwrap (not skins)

Meanwhile there was plenty of chopping to be done:- onions, garlic, and my personal favourite many kilos worth of almonds and walnuts for what I mis-remembered as chimpi champi chongo.  But what was actually Champandongo. I was closer than I thought.  This is basically a Mexican type lasagne. Arlene made up fresh tortillas (I was very impressed by this, no one actually makes tortillas),

rectangle tortillas

and these were layered with a pork/beef/tomato/onion, nut mixture, (pretty much 1/2 meat and 1/2 nuts), cream and mole (Chilli, chocolate  etc sauce that Terry had made up earlier).

meat and nut mixture

I was also in charge of slicing up and frying heaps of green tomatoes that Terry still had from his garden.  Coated them in corn meal, cumin, salt and pepper

My fried green tomatoes

Chris kept herself very busy too.  At one stage stirring two pots at once on the stove

Chris and 2 pots

Arlene chopping up some lemon

Terry made up the Mexican spicy pumpkin pies

Mexican pumpkin pies

June having a laugh

Arlene also having a laugh

Terry also gave us a lovely lunch.  Perhaps one of the best lasagnes that I had ever had.  It was really delicious, all the proportions were right - meat/sauce/cheese/pasta.

Finished up in the late afternoon,and I drove back to the house.  Passed a stationary kangaroo by the side of the road.

Inspected the garden, and was pleased to see a rose in bloom

one of my iceberg roses that I grew from a cutting

I wasn't so pleased to see the side fence in a bit of trouble, with one of the posts fallen down

let's hope its still up when we come up next

Read the newspaper in bed until it was time to go. (as I could stay nice and warm in there)

Drove back to the Church for our fabulous Mexican dinner and film night, and sat at a table with Maile, David, Jill, June  (who was up from Melbourne), Ron (June's son-in law), Lee, David, Dawn etc.  Was rather fun.  Shared around my bottle of sparkling red which went down rather well.

David, Jill, and Lee

Maile, Dawn, Lee & David

Started off with the warmed up refried bean bean dip and corn chips.  Might sound a bit pedestrian, but was delicious.

Next up the entree was chorizos and fresh salsa with home made bread rolls by Arlene and June

chorizos and salsa

home made bread rolls

Chris went around collecting the money on a plate, was rather ecclesiastical of her

money collector

Main was the chimpi champi chongo, which was surprisingly good.  The nuts gave it a brilliant taste and texture.  It was accompanied by different re-fried beans, a different salsa, and the fried green tomatoes.

refried beans, fried tomatoes, salsa and chimpi champi chonga
(could have had some red in there)

Jill enjoying herself

And then we started the film :-Like Water for Chocolate.  Terry showed it dubbed in English, which I felt detracted from the film.  As the dubbing didn't seem to be very good, and it was distracting hearing the voices, but not seeing them correspond to the mouth movements.  Maile hated it, thought it was dreadful.  She still had a good night though.  Poor old Terry, when he has shown foreign films with subtitles before there were some complaints, and when he shows English versions of foreign films there are also complaints.  You just can't please everyone.  Also, it had been my choice or at least one of my suggestions, so I obviously felt ownership, and responsible if people didn't like it.   

Like Water for Chocolate

And lastly the desserts, Terry's spicy pumpkin pies with caramel sauce and cream, and Jan's 3 Leche (Milk) cake with chocolate chilli sauce - both very scrumptious.

Home after 12, and a very successful and fun night, with delicious food - if I do say so myself

Sunday, by myself and a slowish start, read in bed before getting up for breakfast.  Given that it was cold, but sunny had a grilled sandwich outside for breakfast - pretty good

And then got stuck into some weeding - out the front, and in the vegetable garden.

Also had to go and buy some flowers and chocolates for Lizzie.  When we were here last time, Tori had accidentally dropped some of her cards out of her wallet in Lizzie's shop.  Lizzie found them, and called up Melbourne phone numbers with their surname.  Tori was very grateful, and so asked me to  

get Lizzie something nice on her behalf

gift roses

gift chocolate

She wasn't at the shop, and neither was Ben, so I had to wait until later

Lizzie's shop was closed

Terry had asked me to lunch last night - given that there were plenty of leftovers, and perhaps to review the evening.

As I said I'd been weeding, and so was in my Winter overalls. I wasn't going to shower and change as I'd probably do more weeding when I returned, and after all we're not too precious in the country.

Got to Terry's around 12.30, and chatted with his brother in law Anton who had been there last night also.

Anton cooked up the chorizos on the BBQ, and Arlene, David and June also joined us.   Like an after-party - at lunch time.  Felt like part of the "in crowd" 

Lunch #1

Lunch #2

Lunch #3

Not a long lunch, but very pleasant, and then back to my weeding.  Also tracked Lizzie down, the shop had re-opened, and Ben gave me their address.  Lizzie didn't want to accept the flowers and chockies, but I insisted.  Also wanted to hide behind them while I took a photo.

Lizzie with Tori's gift

Apart from weeding, I also did a little planting, as I had splurged and bought some berry plants from the IGA

A loganberry, youngberry, and a redcurrant.  Hope they have survived the frost...

loganberry

youngberry

red currant

 And finally, a very curious occurrence.  I saw that we had left a champagne flute on the window sill in the dining room from the previous week. I thought there was a hair or something about 1cm from the top of the glass

hair around the top?

But, it turned out that it was actually a crack, or more accurately broken

No idea how that would have happened.  Very strange indeed.  Told Justin about it, and his first non serious reaction was "ghosts" (Note the following week we went to Warrnambool with Karen & Mark, and Justin showed me that there was a glass with a similar crack around

the top in the apartment there too.  Maybe not as freaky as I thought)