Jac’s birthday brunch 2010
We held Jac’s belated birthday brunch with her family and friends at our house. We celebrated after her actual birthday so that her brother Brad could come. He works away, so we held the brunch on one the weekends he was home. Jac loves “playing host” and was really looking forward to putting on a big feed for everybody! As you’ll see, it was indeed a big feed!
That Sunday morning, she fried the bacon. A lot of bacon.
She’d made what she called “breakfast patties” – these sausage patties were very tasty with barbecue or tomato sauce.
She fried eggs for everyone, all cooked in one go in the electric fry pan.
She pre-cooked the waffles the night before to save time, and on the actual morning of the brunch it was my job to warm them under the grill and make sure they didn’t get burnt.
Jac also cooked up a big batch of garlic mushrooms, with whole garlic cloves.
She cooked up a batch of stewed tomatoes too.
There was one experimental dish – experimental in that Jac had not cooked it before – a tortilla de patatas, or Spanish-style potato omelette. Jac’s auntie, whose husband is Spanish, learned to make this dish and has cooked it for the family on a number of occasions. Jac decided she’d give it a try herself for her birthday brunch. She found a potato omelette recipe in one of her cook books and based her version on that recipe plus her memories of her auntie’s potato omelette.
It turned out pretty well. I ate my potato omelette with lashings of stewed tomatoes.
I grabbed myself a bit of everything (including a couple of the whole garlic cloves from the mushroom dish!) and drizzled maple syrup over my bacon and waffle, adding a little smear of butter on the waffle as well. With a little cracked black pepper on the fried egg, I was all set.
I really enjoyed the stewed tomatoes – they were delicious! But of course, my favourite item was the waffle. I always love waffles. After I finished my waffle, I couldn’t help myself – I just had to have another!
How to make ordinary fruit salad quite special
Jac had asked Kelsie to bring some fruit for brunch – she walked in carrying an awesome watermelon basket which held a rather lovely looking fruit salad. Brad had carefully carved that watermelon basket. We were all very impressed, as this was his first fruit basket carving. :)
Presented in the basket, the fruit looked so very appealing, shiny like jewels, especially the juicy orange segments and the dark purple, almost black pearls, I mean grapes. :D
The fruit was very refreshing after all the salty, savoury, buttery breakfast fry-up items. I had a couple of rounds of fruit salad as well.
It’s OK to turn up late…
We’d also invited my sister Juji and her boyfriend Jay over for brunch. Everyone was due to arrive at 10.30am. By 10.45am everyone else had arrived, but no Juji and Jay. By 11.00am they still had not arrived and I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I call them and politely enquire if they were on their way? Should I wait and see if they called or arrived late? How long do you wait for someone to turn up to a meal? By this time everyone was hungry and the food was ready, so we served up and everyone started eating. Those of us with big appetites moved on to round two – more bacon, waffles, more everything! We then started on the fruit salad. I started to stack the dishwasher and put the leftovers into containers ready to be put away in the fridge. I decided I’d call Juji and Jay after everyone had gone home if we still hadn’t heard from them by then.
At around 11.45am, the phone rang. It was Juji, apologising profusely for having completely forgotten about brunch! She’d been up early that morning, put on two loads of laundry and done a bunch of chores when Jay suddenly said, “Um, weren’t we meant to be at TFP’s and Jac’s place for breakfast or something today?” By the sound of her voice I could tell she felt terrible! Jac and I weren’t upset or offended, and I really didn’t want Juji to be upset either – to be honest, I was just relieved nothing bad had happened to them! I told her they were still welcome to come over, there was plenty of food left to eat if they were hungry, and we’d love to see them, if they would still like to come over. I could hear that she still quite upset and angry at herself for having forgotten. I assured her Jac was fine, I was fine, we weren’t mad or upset, and she really shouldn’t be upset either. But I did walk down the hallway holding the cordless phone and whisper to Juji (out of Jac’s hearing) that if they were coming over and only if they wanted to, they could pick up an ice cream cake for Jac on their way over! >;D You see, Jac and I had talked about buying an ice cream birthday cake because she LOVES ice cream cake, but with the busy week and work and getting the house ready for entertaining and everything else, we’d run out of time and never got around to buying any cake.
… if you bring ice cream cake!
When Juji and Jay arrived, they brought a Freddo party ice cream cake! Jac was chuffed to see them, and she was surprised and thrilled to see the ice cream cake! Here in Australia, Freddo Frogs are a very popular chocolate product – milk chocolate in the shape of a cartoony frog – made by Cadbury.
Jac’s niece and nephew played Wii and we all sat around and chatted, munched on fruit salad and had cups of coffee and tea while Juji and Jay grabbed something to eat from the boxes of leftovers. When they finished eating, it was time for Freddo party ice cream cake! Nice chunky slices for everyone! The brightly coloured layers and the multicoloured sprinkles really do scream “party”!
As we ate the cake, our friend Sue remarked: “I keep thinking the different colours will taste of different flavours, but they all taste the same!” We all laughed and agreed. But no one was complaining! It did all taste the same, but it was cold and creamy, sweet and delicious – we all loved the ice cream cake.
Juji and I were most excited to read on the back of the box that the cake contained “TEENY MILK CHOCOLATE FREDDOS”! The cold ice cream that engulfed these little pieces of chocolate Freddo kept them nice and crunchy. I really felt like a little kid sitting there, hunting for mini chocolate Freddos and licking the ice cream off my spoon. It was such fun.
We didn’t need to eat again that day until dinner-time!
I did ask Juji if she would mind me telling you guys about how she and Jay forgot to come to brunch. I also reminded her that the story would end happily with them turning up with the yummy ice cream cake. She told me to go right ahead. :D
So guys – have you ever forgotten to turn up to a social event? Or have you been stood up by someone who simply forgot? Did you forgive them? :D