Jac’s brother Jon was over from Sydney and we had a family dinner, the first one held at our new house. We served nibblies out on the patio. The sun was setting when I took this photo – it wasn’t quite dark enough to turn the lights on, but I guess I should’ve for better lighting for the photo. Oh well. Left to right we have: crackers, sliced gherkin pickles and pickled onions, roughly cubed tasty cheddar (“tasty” being the name of the cheese as well as a description :)) and semi-sundried tomatoes.

Kelsie brought along bread she’d baked herself. It was studded with olives and looked fantastic. Jac popped it into the oven to warm before serving.

I sliced up Italian sausage and Jac fried it so it was springy, crispy-edged and smelled absolutely delicious.

We served the fried sausage on a platter with the sliced olive bread warm from the oven. Jac poured a little balsamic vinegar into a dish for dipping the bread into. The sausage was great on a cracker with a little cheese too. :)

The first course was chicken skewers. Jac marinated chicken thigh pieces in plum sauce and orange juice, skewered then grilled them. We first ate chicken thighs marinated in plum sauce and orange juice cooked by our friend Sascha, so Jac always refers to this recipe as “Sascha Jane’s thighs” (ewww! LOL) . I’ve renamed it “Sascha Jane’s chicken”. :D Just before the chicken was ready to serve I arranged the vegetables on the platter – lettuce, cherry tomatoes and blanched mini asparagus. Jac said the mini asparagus was labelled “Thai asparagus”.

Onto the main course. There were a few bits and pieces. Jac boiled up sweet potato and butternut pumpkin and I made it into orange mash. I mashed up the orange vegetables with butter, salt and pepper. I was generous with the butter – you can probably see the ring of butter at the edges of the mash. :-P

Jac steamed Brussels sprouts and broccoli. Regular readers will know I’m too fond of Brussels sprouts, so it’s a good thing she did broccoli too, otherwise I wouldn’t have eaten any greens. :)

Kelsie made her special potato bake. It smelled amazing and was all melty and gooey when I dug in with the spoon. I couldn’t wait to have some.

It was pretty late for dinner for me on a week night, so I didn’t eat as much as I normally would. I enjoyed every bit of it though – potato bake, broccoli, orange mash and meatloaf with a blob of tomato sauce. Jac’s mum made her special meatloaf – sorry, I didn’t get a decent photo of it. It was yummy with tomato sauce and all the other side dishes. Mmmm.