Happy Birthday Allstar, Part III [The Eating]

I hadn't seen most of my friends from my old work for over a year. (Before my current cinema, and before my terrible 3 months working in a restaurant, I used to work at a different cinema, which is where I met the lovely Alistair). Apparently, Daniel, who still works there, has been really bigging up my cooking in my absence. This surprised me, as I, unlike Daniel, tone down the food-talk in everyday conversation, so as not to make me appear like a crazy Nigella-obsessed loon.

Some quotes from the weekend:

"So Sarah, Daniel tells me you've been cooking some fantastic stuff..."
"How's your food blog?"
"I hear that you appeared in a magazine!"
"So what's your favourite thing to cook?"
"Hey, did you hear that? We got a compliment! The gourmet chef likes our nachos!"

I pulled out the cheese stars on Saturday afternoon as we were all chillaxing by the pool. They taste just like Cheds. In other words, they taste awesome. And their salty crunchiness was perfect with a beer on a warm afternoon.


joe with stars

Joe: You could sell these. I'm serious!


Jo, Al, Jaffe with stars


Symone reading my article

And later that evening... it was time for cake!


the cake


allstar with cake


Box o' cookies - these were all the extra ones that didn't make it onto the cake but were delicious nonetheless.

The cookies and the cake went really quickly - there were about 15 of us up there, and sugar always seems to be welcome.


1/2 cake

Nigella was right. As she predicted, "Your child will be more interested in the cake’s icing than in the texture or taste of the sponge itself". People liked the icing, and as you can see from the photo below, even shaved off slices of icing to eat.


people like icing

Now, as regards the stew - I didn't serve it up to everyone. Partly this was because there wouldn't have been enough for 15 people, but mainly because I was still pretty wrecked from the previous day of cooking and passed out in my room during dinner time. Whoops. They had snags for the BBQ, they were fine.

One more thing, you may remember I was planning on making Nigella's patented marmite sandwiches (vegemite, in my case) while I was up there. But again, Nigella was right.

"I have come to the conclusion that sandwiches are primarily there to placate the parents: they act as a nutritional sop, making the grown-ups feel better about all the sweet stuff the children are really eating; it thus looks like a proper tea, not the full-on sugar orgy it is".

I didn't end up making the sandwiches - I was too relaxed to bother, and to tell the truth, no-one really seemed to mind. Biscuits, cake, nachos, BBQ sausages and all the other generic supermarket-bought snacks seemed to satisfy all our meal and munching needs.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLSTAR!