BBQ Marathon

And so we did it. A 9-hour BBQ marathon that began at 1 pm and ended at 10 pm when we sent off the last guests, well-fed and watered, into the night. A success. But we weren't that sure to start off with...

First there was the debate of cooking 2 different meals - lunch and dinner, for 2 separate groups (total 14 people) vs a BBQ marathon. Good sense finally prevailed and we went with the BBQ marathon. It would have been even more stressful to design and cook 2 different menus, I am not sure if the kitchen (or the relationship) would have survived the pressure.

We did our planning and preparation work on Friday night and Saturday morning. We heaved bundles of veggies, ice-cream and other nibbles back on Friday night and I started work on the curry, seeing as curry always tastes better after it has the chance to sit overnight for the flavours to seep in. It had to be a veggie curry, as we had to cater to a couple of vegetarians, so I made a Malaysian-style curry of eggplants, zucchinis, carrots, tomatos, onions and chick peas. Along with veggie shopping, was a bunch of pink flowers to liven up the room.

Saturday morning saw us scurrying around Chinatown, buying little veggie and peanut dumplings for the vegetarian entree (I've already taken care of the chive and pork dumplings for NORMAL people) and 3 different Thai desserts. That saved us a bit of work. The seafood was next - we got fish, squid, baby octopus, prawns and scallops. Several of our meat-eating friends had offered to bring sausages, while we bought a pack of veggie sausages.

G was in charge of the cooking on the balcony, while I was in charge of cooking indoors and serving food and replenishing drinks. Food and drinks flowed endlessly until we finally gave up at 4 pm and could eat no more.

With the second round of guests arriving at 5 pm, we had a brief respite before we conducted an encore performance. And finally we got to the finale. After the first round of dessert of the little Thai cakes and jellies, we seduced the dinner guests with a promise of an adult-version ice-cream, which was a chocolate and honeycomb nougat ice-cream liberally doused with kahlua and topped with shaven dark chocolate flakes. The dinner guests, stuffed as they were by then, could not refuse this offer. The lunch guests were left out of this as we had completely forgotten about the ice-cream after they had their Thai desserts. The adult-version dessert was a resounding success. People ask for an extra shot of kahlua, neat. We finally sent off the last group at 10 pm, happy and stuffed to the gills, staggering to catch their cabs home.

And with warmer weather coming our way, we can all look forward to more BBQs with our friends, celebrating summer, friendship and life.