the patersons have moved

The Patersons found a beautiful apartment just 400m from the beach in Cronulla and moved out of Mascot on Thursday, just before Easter. (Read here on how I got to know the Patersons.) Beh Kee and I thought since they have not visited our humble pad before, it'd be a good idea to invite them over to our place for dinner before they move too far away from us.

The menu was:
- salad
- garlic bread
- oven baked portobellas with garlic (this was my lover yen-yen's specialty!)
- the potato baked thingy (Steph made this for the BBQ on Matt's bday and Beh Kee wanted to learn the recipe)

Below chips and rubbish food were prepared to distract the kids while the adults did the naughty stuff.



Here's preparing the potatoes before slicing them for the bake.



Beh Kee's other ingredients for the bake thingy were some pumpkin and carrots.



Here you see Beh Kee struggling with the cutting. It was her first time preparing a pumpkin and she got a shock at how hard this fruit of the gourd family was.



Ready for the bake.



I prepared a simple salad for us while we waited for the other dishes to be ready. This was quite an effortless task - just some washing, cutting and arranging.



I couldn't find portobellas in Coles and had to make do with some medium sized flat mushrooms. I had stupidly placed the entire tray of them into the oven without adding the minced garlic which was supposedly the star of this dish. Fortunately, Beh Kee discovered my folly and I got to rectify the mistake before it was too late. I also roasted some leftover pumpkin so we had more munchies on the sides.



We bought some ready made frozen garlic bread which didn't need much preparation - we just popped them into the oven for about 20min and voila! they were ready to be eaten.



The table was set for five including a baby's corner.



See the baby's corner in the right pic below? We specially prepared plastic cutlery and baby sized snack packs here.



Finally, the Patersons arrived at 7.05pm, except for Daddy Paterson who was working as usual. What a very busy pilot Daddy P is!



Cassy took to her specially set up baby corner very well and had a great time munching her cheese flavoured twisties.



Seajay was the babysitter (as usual) but she got a few moments to relax when Beh Kee took over charge of Cassy after she was done with the cooking.



We encountered some very embarrassing moments when the potato bake got burnt on the surface but didn't get cooked after like 2 hours in the oven. Mummy Paterson had to whip up some kind of a gravy in 3 minutes to add to the bake. And we waited and waited and waited for the potatoes to get cooked.



We gorged ourselves with the mushrooms, salad, garlic bread and lots of chips while waiting for the main dish to be ready. The guests didn't get to savour the potato bake in the end as they were quite stuffed with all the junk food we provided during the wait. Here you see me serving the mushrooms and a pic of our beautiful guests.



Here's the semi-cooked vs the fully cooked potato bake which took us a record 3+ hours to cook. Those potatoes became Beh Kee's and my lunches at work in the following week. Although Beh Kee was extremely disappointed by the damn potatoes that just refused to get cooked, they actually tasted really good after like four days in the fridge. I'm sure Beh Kee can perfect the recipe after a few more tries.



These days, I tend to prefer these stay-in parties as opposed to those go-out-club-and-get-drunk kind of parties. It could partly be due to the coming of age, but well, I guess the right companions and great conversations play a part too. Til the next time we play host again then.