Jac and I were responsible for the nibblies. Jac made a crab dip, while I assembled the two nibblies platters. The first platter featured the seafood – the crab dip in the centre, smoked salmon, trout and mussels. Also on the platter I placed fresh lemon wedges, capers, sour pickled gherkins, pickled onions, sundried tomatoes, cucumber, yellow capsicum and carrot sticks, and Havarti cheese. I chopped the fresh vegetables into sticks for dipping, but as per Jac’s suggestion, I sliced the cheese and smoked fish roughly into squares so they’d fit nicely on the mini toasts and crackers we served with the platters. You should’ve seen Pixel as soon as Jac opened the tin of crab meat to make the dip. She went crazy and paced around mewing and looking for the source of the enticing smell. And when I started slicing up the smoked fish she really got excited! I did give her a taste of the smoked salmon when I finished preparing the platters. She liked it very much.

The second platter featured the cold meats – sliced beef pastrami and cabanossi sausage – and fresh cucumber and grape tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, sweet spiced gherkins, colby cheese, marinated olives and chargrilled eggplant. In the centre I placed a round of Camembert cheese (we served it with a cheese knife so people could slice themselves as much as required). Just as I recently mentioned how much I love preparing fruit platters, I really love putting together nibblies.

Jac’s brother B’s partner K had cooked up a big batch of chicken drumsticks. They’d been marinated with herbs and lemon juice and were very succulent.

K also made a big salad, with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, carrot, cucumber and capsicum.

She also made a baked potato dish. She was worried it didn’t look very good but believe me, it was supremely tasty (and personally, I thought it looked great!).

Jac was very excited to see K’s big dish of lasagna. Here it is, fresh and hot out of the oven. Jac’s Mum divided it into individual servings ready to go.

Jac’s mum made meatloaf, complete with a tomato sauce glaze. She mentioned how lovely it is to eat the meatloaf cold the next day with salad (Jac likes a thick slice of meatloaf in a sandwich), but I don’t know if there was much left after we were done – it was delicious!

Uncle N and Auntie F brought Chinese barbecue meats with rice (L to R soya chicken, barbecue pork, roast duck), from Hong Kong Barbecue Restaurant in Northbridge. I love the rice from HK BBQ – they pour tasty duck sauce over it before serving and it is unbelievably delicious. I wasn’t expecting there’d be any rice at dinner, so as both a rice lover and meat lover I was pretty thrilled to see rice AND Chinese barbecue meats!

I had a bit of everything. My favourites were the lasagna, meatloaf and that duck saucey rice.

For dessert, there was chocolate pie, baked by K, served with luscious King Island cream.