Doing What Australians Do Best

What do Australians do best? Barbecue of course. It's a well known fact that Australians never eat indoors if they can eat outdoors and all Australians barbecue all their food every day.

The new Weber barbecue.

We haven't owned a barbecue for years, which was clearly a situation that needed rectifying if we were to maintain our status as true blue. Thanks to a generous birthday gift of cash from Simon's parents we have bought (amongst other things) a smallish Weber, from LeRoy Merlin, costing €79.

Simon put it together yesterday, and since it turned into a lovely warm day and fine balmy evening we decided to barbecue some chicken legs we had purchased the day before in ED for something like €3.50 / kg. Simon, being the bloke, was obviously in charge of the barbecue. He marinated the chicken in a mixture of soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce and a dash of balsamic vinegar. After a slow start with much worrying about how much charcoal was enough, he left the chicken under the dome to cook, along with a quartered green pepper.

The peppers went on at half time.

Being the sheila, I was in charge of salads. I had some home made Russian dressing already in the fridge, so I cooked some potatoes to make potato salad. Then I used my newly acquired vegetable spaghetti tool (purchased on Thursday from the Asia Store in Poitiers) to make strips of carrot and cucumber, dressed with a cumin spiced vinaigrette. I washed some oak-leaf lettuce and put out the slow roasted tomatoes I had made a few days earlier.

All piled on a plate. The drink is ginger syrup
(also from the Asia Store) and fizzy mineral water.

We sat outside in the coin d'apéro and watched the redstarts and bats catching their supper. The sky slowly turned from intense bright blue to pearly pink. It was magic.

Susan