Posts Tagged ‘bbq’

After Elina was given a book in barbecuing as a Secret Santa present (as you do) I was determined we were going to make some use out of it. So I put in my calendar that on the first of April, we would buy a barbecue. Basically none of that happened. We never cracked the book, my dad gave me a small barbecue, so I didn’t have to buy one, and then the weather went back to winter for a month.

Now it is May though, and the warmth has returned. So, armed with a sea bream and a red mullet I assembled the barbecue, filled it with briquettes and lighting gel, and set the thing in fire. It went out. I added more paper and tried it again. It went out again. Determined to prove my manliness I tried a third time with loads of paper. Still no luck. I stormed off angrily.

I took five minutes to calm down, and then back to sort it out and clear it away. It was packing out heat. Turns out that even though the flames had died down really quickly, the thing was in fact lit. Victory! My manliness in fact I put the fish into my fish-holder-thing and began to barbecue.

In the mean time I started cooking a soup, so I spent the next twenty minutes running between the balcony and the cooker trying to keep both of them going at once.

The red mullet was not a big winner on the dinner table. It’s firm flesh did not come off the bone easily. However, the sea bass cooked beautifully. The flesh tore away, the skin was crispy and the meat was tasty. Further research comparing it to sea bass and mackerel is needed.

My gran’s side is quite a large family and we used to get together on a regular basis. Unfortunately, as people have got older, it is become a little too much to organise a large party, so they have gradually faded away.

That is until my parents stepped up and said they would organise a summer BBQ.

We ended up taking ten dishes – four breads (bloomer, stout, focaccia, stilton and bacon rolls), two sides (coleslaw, noodle salad), two starters (tomato and goat’s cheese tart, smoked trout pâté) and two dessert (devil’s food cake and eclairs). Most of it got eaten though due to the volume of food other people also brought we ended up coming home with boxes of new things as well!

We were reasonably lucky with the weather. There was a tiny bit of rain, but not enough to drive us inside, and the night was chilly but not survivable once we had the fire put going.

As part of Gabriele and Tim’s recent house warming, we took advantage of the good weather to do a riverside BBQ. It turns out Tim is quite the BBQ chef!

Sarann and Moz are clearly moving up in the world – their new house has four bedrooms, a jacuzzi bath and most importantly, a bar. So it was only right and proper that we welcomed it in style with a vegan BBQ, that also featured giant jenga that Sarann had had made at a timber yard.

Having relatives from Canada visting, we decided (well, my parents decided, I turned up and ate) to throw a family BBQ. My camera battery was on its lasts legs though, so I only got pictures of the fire.

Friday saw us kick things off with One Life, this week’s session being about ethics. As John was running late I started the session as chair for the first half an hour or so raising a few topic discussions before the real content matter was entered when John arrived. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough plates and cutlery for the committee ended up eating out of a cup with a spoon!

Afterwards we headed up to City Church on Headingley road who were running re:fresh, a free BBQ and hot drinks session to catch drunk people Otley running it. We would have had a few drinks in the old bar first but as they were Christians they had to go to bed at 11 so we had to go there first 😀 .

Having come direct from One Life we were of course in our Atheist Society hoodies which made for a fun time – of course they were very welcoming though the hoodies did get described as inappropriate by a girl on a fancy dress Otley run dressas as a Roman which we didn’t find at all ironic. After all, what have the Romans ever done to Christians? 😉

Headed over to my parents on Monday for a big family BBQ as we had relatives over from Canada. Food was good which is the most important thing plus it was a chance to brag about how how awesome my life is. Fun times 😀 .

On Saturday night I attended the annual BBQ of the North Yorkshire Humanist Society (so don’t get confused – it wasn’t a BBQ where we cooked North Yorkshire Humanists 😉 ).

The BBQ itself was good although I feel I was mis-sold when told it was in York as it was in a village just outside named Haxby – not a problem when you’re coming from York but on the far side when driving up from Leeds.

It was interesting to see the demographics in North Yorkshire, the age range is much better than West Yorkshire although this could have been disorted by the fact it was a bit more of a social event than a regular meeting.

They seem an active enough society though, they hold 11 meetings a year (just missing out August) which is more frequent than a lot of societies which take extensive summer breaks and they seem to have quite a bit of committee rotation going on.

Me and Eric had been saying for a few months now that when the weather got warmer we would do a BBQ after the close one night. The weather having got better recently I decided that Saturday was the day we should finally go for it and despite initial rain when we started out shift it was (relatively) warm and dry by the time we got out. So we settled down for a BBQ and a beer in the car park – epic win 😀 .

The photos didn’t come out too clear as I’m still playing around with my various camera settings but it portrays the idea.

I’m quite proud I managed to cook everything without killing anyone and Becky brought along drinks and donuts too so it was quite a night.

Saturday night was Wendy House’s 10th birthday so having enjoyed some rather nice steak at Maths Chris’s BBQ we did some drinking at Circle Party Central then headed down for some old fashioned Wendy-based fun.

With it being 10 years of Wendy and all they had laid on a special extra room for it. So like the old people we are, we just went to Stylus and spend the entire night there like normal :D. Never the less it was an excellent night – we got there fairly early, as in, before 11 which is fairly unusual for Circle trips to Wendy and didn’t leave till the end (except for a few rubbish losers and Norm).

It was good to hang out with people who aren’t particuarly new faces but people who haven’t really been out at Circle clubbing events before. Indeed, it almost felt like an A-Soc committee meeting in parts with myself, Norm, Nicola, Rosie and Liz as well as ex-social secretary Sarann all in attendance.

Unfortunately because Nicola didn’t make it to the pre-party she wasn’t able to bring my princess costume so I wasn’t able to join in with that one – what a shame huh? :p.