We had M and Firegazer over for lunch yesterday. As there were eight for lunch, I roasted two chickens. I expected there might have been some leftovers for dinner last night, but all we were left with was a half-gnawed wing and a bit of giblet skin. M explained the attraction of the Twilight series (Blossom is working her way through the book) and Padawan Learner disappeared into Junior's cave and the two of them spent the day discussing the finer points of putting a Lego Death Star together. I think I know what someone might be asking for this Christmas.....
The plan was to set the table in the backyard and have a Sunday roast on a Saturday. However, it's been pouring down for days, and the lawn is now a swamp. We still had the chooks though.
We had a lunch like that when my parents visited a few weeks ago. Dad commented that the Sunday roast was never a roast when he was growing up. Instead, they knocked off a chook that had stopped laying, or one of the roosters, and boiled it. The birds were so old and tough by the time they were killed, they were like shoe leather. Or crows. The very wealthy might have eaten roast chicken, but the rest of the population had it boiled.
(And before you start thinking that my grandparents were just scraping by; by that point, grandfather had ascended to the lofty position of engine driver on the railways - a similar position to a Jumbo pilot in terms of pay and prestige in say in the 1970's, and was in the top stratum of society in their country town. He took a wage cut when he entered parliament as a Labor MP).
Our plan was also to serve lunch using the antique silver cutlery set that we picked up on one of our country sojourns. There were two reasons for that. First, thanks to wear and tear and kids losing them, we have a very disjointed day-to-day cutlery set. In fact, it is not a set. It is a collection of odds and ends of mis-shapen forks and odd-sized knives. It's not very "dinner party".
Second, since M writes Before Our Time, I thought it would be excellent to do the old-fashioned thing with a silver service.
Well, here is my third thought for the day.
Don't buy silver unless you have staff. As in a Butler or Maid. There was no time to clean and polish the silver, so we ate off the mish-mash of everyday stuff. I told J that we should simply get M to clean it when she arrived, so she could experience another Before Our Time moment and blog about it, but I was shot down in flames.
Maybe next time.
Thought number 3.5 - when did we not only get old enough to drink Pinot Noir, but to actually enjoy it and search the wine cellar for more bottles of it?
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