Feast

Sunday was my birthday, and to mark the occasion I hosted a celebratory brunch. I invited all of my friends and family over, then I cleared the cars out of the carport, brought all of the tables out of the house and put them in a row, covered them with tablecloths and then covered the tablecloths with food. I also brought out every chair in the house, the barbecue, and virtually everything in the kitchen that wasn’t bolted down.


Well, I say “I”, but thanks to my broken arm I had to arrange for my friend JC and The Flatmate to all the heavy lifting… and the tablecloth laying, fruit cutting, and chair cleaning. I ground the coffee beans and assiduously performed the important duties of demanding martinet project manager.


Everybody seemed to have a good time, and we feasted on bacon, eggs, toast, chipolatas, grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, croissants, juice, coffee, fruit salad with yoghurt and toasted pine nuts, three kinds of muffins and, in keeping with The Simpsons' definition of brunch*, fresh rockmelon. Oh, and champagne. It just isn't brunch without champagne.


Which is sort of odd, when you think about it. No one would consider holding a brunch and dumping a bottle of, say, merlot on the table. Why does champagne get a "Get Drunk in the Morning Without Social Opprobrium" card? I think we need to refine this further. Catering would be so much easier if I could simply hand each guest a box of crackers and a bottle of Jack Daniels and tell them to go crazy.


As usual I over-catered, so I have the prospect of eating leftovers for the rest of the week. Breakfast this morning was leftover fruit salad. For lunch I had croissants with Vegemite, which is the sort of culinary faux pas that would make your average patriotic Frenchman shudder like a cheap Korean car going over a cattle grid. Dinner consisted of leftover chipolatas with a salad of leftover grilled tomatoes, leftover fried mushrooms and salad greens from the garden, with leftover yoghurt for dessert.


If I make it to the end of the week without dying of cholesterol poisoning, I can celebrate with the single remaining bottle of champagne.


* "It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end."