Prologue

About a month ago Meredith @macjam1 asked a bunch of us to her place for a Christmas barbecue.

Canberra has a really good and very active group of tweeps. There are circles within circles. I’ve found myself spending a lot of my twitter and facebook time with a small group of friends based in Canberra. We’ve met a few times already and have become firm friends. Some of us know each other through listening to @markparton on @2CC and others have work connections. Mostly though it’s through twitter and facebook. In addition to this group we also have some close twitter buddies in Queensland and Victoria who one day we will visit.

The barbecue

Each of us had in mind something to bring along while @macjam1 and her husband provided an excellent venue and more meat that we could throw a stick at. The weather ended up being great after forecasts of rain and cold. The afternoon and evening air was fresh but not cold. The sound of mosquitoes was held at bay with Aeroguard and Citronella candles.

The food was heavily influenced by most of us recently taking to various weight loss programs. Some are doing variations on low carbohydrate systems, others are exercising like crazy (cycling and Zumba are popular) and there are those on combinations. We started with combinations of spicy sausage and mushrooms cooked on the barbecue along with a cheese ball and Turkish bread and dips. Then @NatMcNazz brought along these awesome Parmesan cheese biscuits flavoured with chilli and fennel.

This image reveals @tinythecabbie ‘s hand

Here is a close up of Fred and his partner Cork

The tooth picks later became popular with the kids who lit them in the candles and then played with fire (all under close adult supervision of course).

There was so much great food. By the time it was dinner time, I’d already eaten enough for a few nights anyway. Our gracious hosts and other friends had brought along enough to feed us all including children and then some.

The coleslaw brought by @Bron99 was awesome and not traditional. I the potato bake was fantastic. Creamy and good. I haven’t had a snag and hamburger for ages. So this image has been captioned Plate one for me because I ended up going back twice more. My second plate was piled high with coleslaw and potato bake and a piece of honey soy chicken. The third plate was mainly coleslaw and another piece of chicken.

Then came the desserts. I’ll just list them through photographs.

I can never resist pavlova. It brings back so many happy childhood memories.

@Bron99 made this lovely white chocolate cheesecake which came with a strawberry coulis.

I confess my eyes were bigger than my belly. I wanted apple pie but after the pavlova and cheesecake I could not go back for the apple pie.

I do not know what this is called but @TinyTheCabbie brought them. So colourful and everyone raved about them.

I have with much sadness and self condemnation have to admit I could not finish this lovely plate of food. My grandmother’s voice echoes in my head about the starving children in Africa, but after the gluttony of snacks and then three plates of dinner, my dessert stomach (also known as the œsophagus) failed me and certain sphincters sending signals to my brain to stop eating or eject food upwards.

At the end of the evening, we had a tweet up photograph which I won’t upload because I don’t have everyone’s permission to share. Suffice to say it is a great photograph and it was a wonderful and happy evening.

I think I can safely post one blurry image of a subset of us who preferred the company of mosquitoes so they could talk about the others

It really was a fantastic evening.

Epilogue

This morning I woke up feeling full. What better way to celebrate a new day than with brunch. Off to Black Pepper we went for a Black Pepper big breakfast.

Did I say there was lots of bacon?

Yep lots of bacon.

Related articles

• My Favorite Coleslaw (claimingliberty.wordpress.com)
• Blue Cheese Bacon Coleslaw (shanehalbach.com)