Two good dinners

I have for around 30 years now attended an Australia day (26th) BBQ with relatives on my mother's side of the family.  We are all pretty old by now however so enthusiasm for the event has waned.  This year even my brother chose to attend the public celebrations at Southbank.  So Anne arranged something for me.

She invited her sister June and Ralph (widower of Anne's late sister Merle) over to her place to join us that evening in a sausage BBQ.  I provided the sausages and a bottle of Seaview brut champagne, my favoured champagne for many years.

In the event Anne decided not to fire up her BBQ and cooked the snags in her frypan.  We had them with a chopped salad, a potato bake and white asparagus. Anne put fresh basil in her salad, which really made it. We had mini-lamingtons for dessert, which was good ethnic Australian.

It was good to see Ralph in good spirits and ready to chat.  The death of Merle was a big blow to him but he is getting over it.

I forget what we talked about but Mr Trump undoubtedly got a mention or two.

Then the next day (27th) an event that I arranged last November came to fruition.  I shouted a dinner that evening for two people I was in the army with -- Rod H. and Peter H.  Peter bought his wife Lana along and Anne also came along.

We had the dinner in the Sunny Doll, a favourite Japanese haunt of mine. I began the evening with two toasts, one to the Queen, which is traditional, and one to our former army unit:  21 Psych.  If you can't toast your old army unit what can you toast?  The wine I contributed was Henkel trocken, a German champagne.

The food was brilliant as usual and we talked mainly about old times.  Since we are all in our '70s that had to happen.  We did have a rather jolly chat about Mr Trump at one stage, though.  As usual the ladies mostly talked to one another.  Anne found she shared a lot of interests with Lana.

We shared among 5 people so everybody got to taste a range of dishes. The Omu rice and the Wagyu beef Don were particularly appreciated. The docket below shows what we had but I think they left something off.  They have done that before.