Chop till you drop

Lo Jardinièr carrying home some of the ingredients for our contribution to the meal tonight. He had to go back to fetch the 30 baguettes from the boulangérie. I spent the morning chopping tomatoes, peppers, capers, garlic, parsley, olives...... simple things take a lot of time when catering for 100 people!

I'm sure there are blippers who know much more about New Orleans food than we do here, so I hesitate to give the Languedocian version of it in our menu for tonight, but here it is:
Apéritif: punch made with rum, white wine and pineapple juice (made by Ray who is the only one of us who knows New Orleans)
First course: accras (salt cold fritters) with spicy mayonnaise sauce and red bean, sweetcorn, pepper and tomato salad (made by LoJ and me)
Main course: Colombo - chicken in spicy tomato sauce with aubergines and courgettes, and rice (made by Marie-Jo)
There'll be a cheese course because that's what we do here, then pain d'épices with crème anglaise - these last two I'm sure are not authentic at all! And of course the wine will be local.

After that it will be up to Ray and his sextet to entertain us, which I'm sure they will.

I've just been reminded by the year-ago thumbnail that a year ago today LoJ and I met Barrioboy for my first and very enjoyable blip-meet.