HEMERA / THINKSTOCK / ISTOCKPHOTO
You know how they say you always drop your winter weight in summer? No more stews and mashed potato and carb-laden comfort foods, as once the warm weather comes you switch to salads and it all just falls off.
It’s rubbish. And the reason is barbecues. The past few weeks I’ve been to many of them, so I pretty much have this on good authority.
First, sausages are filled with fat. Apparently they’re also filled with animal ears and noses. But who cares? They’re really good to eat, especially gourmet ones, but sometimes the old butcher’s plain and thin varieties with sauce on soft bread can hit the spot like nothing else, and no one even vaguely human can pass a Bunnings on a Sunday without buying at least two.
Secondly, there’s pav. I feel I can eat as much of it as I like as it’s relatively gluten free. So that means at least three pieces.
And thirdly, there’s booze. It’s Christmas, it’s summer, you’ve gotta have a drink. So all those sausages and sav blancs and chips and dip add up. But who cares? No one is going to cancel the barbecue.
Last week a friend kept a long-standing barbecue commitment, despite the fact that it rained non-stop all day and his wife is in the early stages of pregnancy and is seriously peeky. She spent most of the day in the bathroom while he served up the most amazing beetroot-and-feta tart with homemade pastry and a terrine, gorgeously presented on a bed of watercress, such lovely slices of pork and chicken and squashed up pistachios wrapped in proscuito. I can’t stop thinking about it.
But technically this was a barbecue so, at exactly the right time, just when the kids were getting loud and cranky, he went outside with a beer and a rainjacket and cooked up some big, fat sausages and spicy chicken wings.
And we ate it all up, followed by pav and cheesecake, washed down with lots of red wine, and at some great stage in the night we all decided to leave the cars there for the night and get taxis home.
What fun to be had this time of year. We love watching the kids run wild around other people’s houses until 10pm, squishing Play-Doh into the carpet and knocking furniture over with Nerf balls ’cos it’s raining outside. What can you do? No one’s going to cancel the barbecue.
We don’t have bagpipes or snow or folk dancing, but we have barbecues. We were raised on them, filled up with cordial and chops then wrapped in blankets and put in the car to sleep while the parents played Rod Stewart and ELO late into the night.
So we’re looking forward to a summer of barbecues. Sometimes just us lot in the backyard ’cos it’s too hot to cook, and sometimes with friends for catch-ups that start at 6pm and might last all night if the kids settle down to watch a movie later and we can talk and drink.
Seasons greetings everyone (hic).