On Saturday our friends Helen & Sig joined us for dinner. It was Sigs birthday and Helen had arranged to visit us as a surprise to her.
Sig with the table set.
Sig & Helen have become devout fans of the British TV series Downton Abbey which we had recently discovered on this side of the pond and encouraged them to watch hoping they would like it too. Having downloaded and watched Seasons 1 & 2 we just had the 2-hour Christmas Special from December 2011 which none of us had yet seen, so tonight we planned to watch that too, after dinner.
We didn’t insist everybody dress in Edwardian costume for dinner, although we did insist on drinking bubbly out of saucers in the spirit of a bygone era !
Sig is a trained photographer although she didn’t bring her camera (as she didn’t know she was coming over for dinner !). She did however steal our cheap point-and-shoot camera and got snappy while dinner was being prepared.
David’s creation for the appetiser was themed on a de-constructed california roll – a tasty tower comprising a base of sticky sushi rice, a yummy gooey layer of mixed avocado, yellow pepper and red onion, a layer of smoked salmon all topped with delicious prawns in a rose-marie type mayonnaise.
We enjoyed the ‘california tower’ with the rest of the Oyster Bay sparkling wine. The Burrowing Owl seen in the background here is waiting for our main course and was one we brought back from our wine-tasting trip to the Okanagan last September.
David and I
Sig was impressed with David’s patriotic chefs apron.
Mojo is delighted to have his best friend on ‘neighbourhood watch’ duty with him.
The main course is coming together.
Serving up.
Dinner !. As always David served up a veritable feast of beef tenderloin with a mustard crust, asparagus and smashed new potatoes with kalamata olives and arugula (thanks Mum & Dad, this was your recipe being put to good use !).
Later we enjoy getting up to date with the rest of the world on the Downton Abbey series with a pecan tart desert. Not a great photo due to the flash…..but we had consumed a quantity of good red wine by this point so quality control had left for the evening !
In all a really fun evening and thanks Sig for running around taking photos so we have a blog entry to write !
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