Progressive Supper

The Kiwi and I drove back to my parentals' on Friday night to spend the weekend at home. They live in a teeny little village filled with large personalities and wonderfully eclectic inhabitants. They do some excellent village activities, for instance there are a large proportion of retirees in the village so the self-titled Queen of Tarts runs a cooking class once a month for the village old boys! Some are widowed, some are married and some aren't old at all, but the idea is that she imparts some basic culinary wisdom on these clueless males, and they get stonking drunk on whiskey before staggering home with some wonky scones!

This weekend's event is called a Progressive Supper. Basically a selection of houses take part - each house takes a dinner course: starter, main, dessert and cheese - and the selection of EIGHTY guests start at one house before journeying through the village and through courses. They each BYO booze/glasses and the proceeds of tickets go to charity.

Mum was very organised but still freaking out at the idea of feeding starters to 80 people so we decided to surprise her and help out. She welled up with tears and gave us huge hugs when we arrived, and again when we'd worked our socks off at midnight on Sat. They put up this marquee, made the house and gardens spotless and decorated tables everywhere with flowers. The night was a huge success, she served salmon mousse, pea and mint soup & carrot and orange soup and received rave reviews. The rents joined the supper-goers for the remaining courses while I picked myself up off the floor and cleaned up with some help from The Kiwi. My feet burn but the look of exhausted relief on parentals' faces when they returned was totally worth it.

Now sleeeeeppp.