Sazzy's Degustation Diary: Sunday 24th May '09

I got up early today to prepare for my BBQ this afternoon. I'm having one for two reasons. Firstly, it's my birthday and second, it's sort of to catch up with my high school friends because this year is ten years from the year we graduated Year 12. I know...time has flown.

I had basa fillets and barramundi fillets that I was wrapping in aluminium foil so we could throw them onto the BBQ.

barramundi with lemon, coriander and pepper

I made some creamy saffron prawn filling for my vol au vents and topped them off with cheese before heating them in the oven.

creamy saffron & prawn vol au vents

I also had the chicken spinach & pinenut burgers patties, hotdogs, fried rice, fried Hokkien noodles, chicken curry and potato salad. We made just the right amount of food - there was only some potato salad and sausages left over afterwards.

Christina made my birthday cake for me. It was a chocolate cake and she spent most of the early afternoon decorating it and it looked awesome! No one could bear to cut into the design, so I took that part of the cake to work tomorrow and still, everyone was gingerly cutting around the design.

I remember for my 21st birthday I had a BBQ and had a speech rehearsed but when it came time to make it, I was both tipsy and nervous and it just ended up being 'thanks for coming, *cry*'. So, tonight I actually wrote my speech down on paper and read it out. I could barely get the words out as I started tearing up when I was only on the first sentence. I managed to get through it all though and then we all had cake.

Every spare chance I had over the last few nights, I'd copied as many photos from my computer as I could and made a collection of photos of all my friends from the past ten years and had them on a random slideshow on my computer monitor in the house. We had fun watching them and it's amazing how much we've grown and changed, yet we've all managed to stay essentially the same person since when we first met.