BBQ Christmas
Another phrase you hear a lot is “put another prawn on the barbie” courtesy of an Australian Tourism advertisement from the eighties. It seems that this is synonymous with our outdoor living lifestyle.
Well, it is and it isn’t.
I don’t know why (again!) that I thought, that’s really Aussie, let’s do prawns on the BBQ for Christmas lunch. I wanted our visitors to have the characteristically Australian BBQ Christmas lunch that they had seen and heard about all these years and that meant seafood. I must say here that we really don’t eat prawns that much, not very Australian I know but they are a bit tasteless unless you put some sort of sauce on them and they are kind of expensive.
The point is, I think that we imagine what a visitor from another country wants to eat and we want to put on a fabulous feast without thinking that maybe they would be happy with cheese on toast? What I didn’t know was that right before Christmas there had apparently been some sort of prawn shortage (!) and the price had gone up. Skyrocketed in fact, they were now $60 a kilo, yikes.
I had promised our visitors the prawn BBQ treat, so I had no choice; I had to shell out (no pun intended) the money. At least the lady at the seafood shop was cheery and helpful whilst she took all my money.
As it turned out, lunch was a pretty casual affair, lots of salads, aforementioned prawns (with garlic), potatoes, ham off the bone and a few snags cooked on the BBQ too.
Everyone was involved and I absolutely love this, it is one of my most favourite things to do, cook with friends and family whilst enjoying an alcoholic beverage. There is something heart-warming about it; I suspect it came from watching my grandmother and my nanna in the kitchen as a child. I loved it.
The warmth of the kitchen, the aromatic smells wafting from the oven and cook top, it was intoxicating and it takes me back to that really wonderful time in my life.
I have experienced this one hundred times over and I never tire of it. It is what brings us together, chopping salad, marinating meat, peeling potatoes, whatever, it is a collaborative effort and I for one think it is underrated. No takeaway here, we prepared every meal with love and it showed.
It’s my favourite time of the day.
