Food History

Sorry everyone. I meant to do you that post on California before all my election party guests turned up because I knew I would be too tired afterwards.

The votecount has just been completed for the night (Aussie election counts stop at midnight, which I’ve never quite understood) and the broad results are in and the new government has been declared and I sat down to write you a post and realised that all I had the energy for was an apology. There’s something very cathartic about a major change in government. How can I just have realised this? Drinking champagne may also be a factor in my brain’s unwillingness to work properly, I do admit.

I’ll tell you what my party attendees ate tonight (I brought some and they brought some and all of us ate both dinner and supper out of it) and tomorrow I’ll give you that post about California. You do need to understand that voting in Australia is compulsory, which means that even souls like me who are not affiliated with any particular party feel very strongly about elections and take them very seriously (and people from other countries are horrified on a perfectly regular basis that we have compulsory voting). I do try to keep my politics away from this blog because I believe just as strongly that there are times and places for political convictions and rants and times and places for subjects that unite people rather than splinter them.

So, to help with the unification front, what did we eat tonight?

Little chicken pastries (I bought elegant little chicken sausage rolls from my neighbouring chicken shop and cut them into even more elegant tiny pastries and then baked them), baked samosas, pumpkin dip and tsatsiki and a pesto dip. Corn chips and capsicum and cucumber for the dips. Chocolate covered coffee beans, almond biscuits from China, chocolate, preserved sweet potato strips, pumpkin seeds marinated in tamari sauce, giant green olives stuffed with feta, roma cocktail tomatoes, melon and mango cream cheese.

Now I feel really mean - I’ve listed all those foods and I’m not giving you a single recipe until tomorrow! I hope this picture will help assuage your hunger.