We started off with some crackers, double brie cheese and sliced sausage – sorry, I was too busy stuffing my face and assembling sliced sausage on sliced cheese on crackers for Jac to take any pictures. It seemed such a long time since lunch! In addition, we munched on some yummy crisps. Hey MK, I forgot to ask what flavour the crisps were…

So here’s the barbie, loaded with the meat: ham and pineapple shishkebabs and marinated chicken thighs. MK and AK very kindly revealed their barbie secrets to me knowing that I would tell you all. Okay, okay, they probably aren’t barbie “secrets” but that sounds enticing, doesn’t it? Heheh.

The shishkebabs were made with lovely big chunks of fresh pineapple and to quote MK: “cheap, crappy ham”. She reckons cheap ham is just the best thing to have on a kebab (heheheh, I guess they knew we wouldn’t be ham snobs :)). The shishkebabs were made extra special and even more tasty with a glaze made from lime and mandarin marmalade and Mezcal, which AK brushed over them as they cooked. The ham was juicy and bouncy with just the right amount of saltiness to go brilliantly with the sweet and juicy (but juicy in such a different way to the ham!) pineapple. We really enjoyed these shishkebabs as we love ham and pineapple on pizza. I want ham and pineapple shishkebabs at future barbies! These were so gooood.

We also had chicken, marinated with ginger, garlic, sweet soy (kecap manis), light soy, honey and a little bit of lime juice. As she tried to remember how she made the marinade so I could write it down (yeah, I took notes), MK said, “I think it was something I got from your site.” :) It does sound like something we’d do, doesn’t it? Please pardon the mixture of flash and non-flash photos – from certain angles because of the lighting the images just seemed to look better flashed.

Look, you can even see the steam coming off the chicken.

To go with the meat, AK barbecued some vegetables – eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and red capsicum. Grilled/chargrilled/barbecued/roasted capsicum and zucchini are among my all-time favourite vegetables. These tasted fantastic. As you can see, I was buzzing around AK with my camera taking pictures as he cooked. Thank you for your patience, AK! Hee hee.

And to go with the barbecued meat and vegies, we also had two salads. First, one made with tomatoes and mixed greens (lettuce, english spinach, rocket). The tomato chunks were seasoned with salt and pepper. It really is amazing how nice tomatoes taste with just a little salt and pepper. When I was at my poorest, as a first-year uni student, I used to eat sliced fresh tomatoes seasoned with salt and pepper, on toast all the time.

The potato salad was made with potatoes (duh), finely chopped red onion, capsicum and gherkins, and dressed with whole egg mayonnaise (According to MK and AK: “It’s gotta be whole egg mayonnaise”).

The plate shot. Everyone watched as I carefully arranged my food on my plate and proceeded to take a dozen of so photos of it. Thankfully, one or two of the photos turned out ok. I find it so hard to take good photographs when I’m tired.