House party

Yesterday was the house party at Kate and Sarah's place. The day started early with a trip to Sainsbury's to do the last minute grocery shopping. The party was due to start at 5pm with dinner for about a dozen of Kate's closer friends (in honour of Kate's birthday on Tuesday), with other people arriving from about 7:30 onwards.

After shopping, Sarah and I assisted Kate in an almighty cook up. On the menu was jambalaya for the main course and chocolate pavalova for dessert. I won't go into detail about the many hours spent in the kitchen, except to say that beating egg whites for pavalova by hand is hard work (and fortunately Kate and I shared this job).

It's probably worth mentioning that it was a very hot and sunny day yesterday, which made being in the kitchen just that little bit more exhausting. It was pretty fun though, cooking up a storm (well, helping to).

All the effort was well and truly worthwhile, and dinner was enjoyed by all.


Dessert was fanatastic too, with the chocolate pav being supplemented by a pav from Marks & Spencer (brought by one of Kate's friends), fruit salad and ice cream.


After dinner, the real party began, and a reasonable amount of alcohol was consumed. At the supermarket earlier in the day, I discovered that Smirnoff double black comes in 700ml bottles over here. All good!!


The party continued well into the night. Sarah, Kate and I finally retired at about 4am, at which point it was starting to get light. It was starting to get warm as well, shaping up to be another warm, summer day in sunny London.