Wednesday 8 August 2012

Serving Souvla...


Today we were having Mum, Dad, Janice and Ray up to ours for a barbeque and John had been so impressed by the Souvla that Irene had done last week that he wanted to have a go for himself so we took the barbeque out of the surround and put the legs on it so that we could attach a motor to the skewers.  Well that was the plan - we could find the little motor that we had brought with us but we could not find the adaptor - isn't that always the way?  No amount of scouring the cupboards in the shed threw any light on its whereabouts so John went off down into the village to see if the little shop had one.  It did but it was a heavy duty industrial sort which cost rather more than we were anticipating but as John said now we have it, we have it!

We had decided to keep the meal simple with pork and chicken souvla, haloumi and lounza, sheftalia, jacket potatoes, salad and dips.  I was obviously no where near qualified to get anywhere near the barbeque thank god because at times it was hotter than Hades as Aunty V would say - so I busied myself with the less glamorous stuff in the kitchen!


It was hard to judge exactly how long the meat was going to take to cook - you don't want chicken undercooked and you don't want the pork dry and chewy so it was a bit of a guessing game not helped by the fact that the marinade on the chicken caused the skin to blacken pretty early on in the cooking process - not that I minded as I love crispy chicken skin (apologies to all my vegetarian friends!).  It became clear though as time went on that we were going to be eating a little earlier than 4.00pm but as our guests arrived at 3.00pm that wasn't a problem.

It was a beautiful day and although we had all the windows open and the doors of the conservatory slid right back it was still too hot in there to eat comfortably.  I shall be so glad when we get our muslin drapes to put up in the roof from Pam on Wednesday (she has been kind enough to hem the lengths for me) - they will hopefully help to diffuse the sunshine (and hide the dirty glass!!).  The only thing we could do was to carry one of the brollies inside!!  This did at least cast a little shade over the table.  So our visitors arrived safe and sound and after a little pre dinner drinkie the food was declared cooked by the masterchef himself and we sat down to 'savour the souvla' and savour it we did - I have to hand it to John he had the meat cooked to perfection and I particularly enjoyed the chicken which I sometime find bland and dry.  It was all lovely and there was a smidge left over which we will no doubt finish off tomorrow (I had been banking on that as I haven't made any other arrangements for food on Sunday!!)


After Dinner and a rest we embarked on a good natured game of Mexican Train dominoes - something which John and I haven't played for a while (it is better with a group of people) but I still managed to romp home the winner!!!  If you have never played or want to refresh your memory then the various rules can be found here: Trains  We brought our set of double twelves with us and at some point we are going to join Mosaic Jeanette and her husband Dehumidifier Graham for a game as I found out when we went to Limassol last week that they play.


We said goodbye to our guests and settled down to watch the Olympics - not expecting to stay awake until the wee small hours as we were so gripped by the events on the track and field.  How fantastic to witness Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford showing what is so Great about Great Britain, not to mention the other medals that had been gained earlier in the day.  At the point at which one of our grossly overpaid footballers managed to miss a penalty in the shoot out against that well known footballing nation South Korea we went to bed. 



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