Things are even more hectic here than I had anticipated.... thanks to succumbing to temptation, going to a party last night, staying out till 1am, crashing till 10 this morning..... thus leaving 4 hours less cooking time than I had planned for. Some things will have to go! Who really wants to try 'Johnny Cakes' anyway??
Anyway, the threatened 'Bob Marley (Late) Birthday Celebration' is now imminent, and this post is now open for business - I hope someone will say 'hi' to wish me well during the next few hours of madness.
Only TWO RULES....
1) Do not mention my real name (if you know it). Here in cyberspace I am known only as Froog.
2) Do not mention the city or country in which I live (if you know or think you can guess). This is also, for now, part of my veil of anonymity!
Of course, if you're here in person there are certain other 'commonsense' rules to follow, like: clean your hands first, keep drinks away from the computer, practise safe sex.....
What am I letting myself in for??
22 comments:
Well, I might as well get the ball rolling myself.... with a weather report.
Yesterday we had an isolated burst of brilliant sunshine, a phantom 'first day of Spring'. Today it is grey and wet again. Pissing down.
It rains a lot in Jamaica. But there it's the tropical, late-afternoon rain, pleasantly warm and refreshing. What we have is a damp, drizzly chill that permeates into your bones.
We are going to need MAXIMUM MARLEY to brighten up our spirits on a day like today!! Cue 'Rebel Music'....
Well, the alcohol is here, so Ive told a frantically running-around Paul that everything else is just gravy on top of that. Now that we know how to work the grill/microwave we can expect some jerk chicken soon. The amounts of alcohol are staggering in my opinion, but that just seem to be Pauls meat and potatoes so were all set. Its a very un-jamaican day, so a lot of people might now show up.... MORE BOOZE FOR US THEN!!!!
Hello!
How is it going so far?
Have a drink on me - it's only 10.30 in the UK so a bit early to join you in one but I'm with you in spirit
Alas, no drinking for me this evening. The only thing we have in the house is baijio and I don't touch the stuff.
Froog just made the last call for drinks -- sadly, bringing an end to a fabulous "live" party. But I'm sure the virtual one continues.
Most often asked question tonight: Did you meet Paul at a Bar?
Hope you've had a fab party, Froog... I've got to get in the mood now for a pink and sparkly Aussie party tonight (inspired by the horrendous Sheila's Wheels commercial - a friend's come back from Australia and feels the need to liven up dull dreich rainy old Scotland). The only pink sparkly clothes I have are pyjamas unfortunately... not quite the right look for the event. Now, where's that credit card.
By the way, total eclipse of the moon tonight for those in the Western Hemisphere - 22.45 - 23.45 ish GMT. Enjoy!
I've never met Froog. He met my husband in a bar somewhere... I think in the Northwest US... and several years before I met my sweetie. They were great pen pals for years.
But I told Jazz about the party and he waves all friendly like. Enjoy, Froog! And if you're inclined, Enjoy Froog!
I didn't meet Froog at a bar, but at a holiday party post party a longgggggg time ago.
dammit froog!
i didnt' want to have to sign up with some account for this! i certainly dont need a blog arena, nor do i even know what that really is! hope your party went nicely, though everyone's probably passed out at this point of the evening/morning. i'm just having my tea and pondering my saturday........nope, nothing exceptionally interesting.
-your intermittant penpal-
Ah, well, the 'live blog' idea fared about as badly as I'd always feared it might. I should perhaps console myself that it was some measure of a successful party that people were too busy drinking and talking to come into my study to use the computer.
Great to hear from a few overseas friends, though. Georg and Jazz - haven't heard from you in ages! Hope everything's going well with you. No, I actually met Jazz in the NE, not the NW (was that just a typo, or a bit of geographic dyslexia, or did he really move around the country that much??).... in a bar called Freddie's in Runnymede, NJ.
Greatest thing about tonight was that it SNOWED. Bizarre in March. But lovely, romantic, sentimental (frostbite inducing), at any time of year. Just sloshed home for half an hour through it, crying laughing singing the whole way.
think i may have missed the action, but hope this counts as better late than never.
Thought i'd wait till this eve (unlike the UK early-birds) to write, as I am now most def. with you in spirit - have had several glasses of v nice wine, and got my dancing shoes on, ready to to hit Soho for pre-dancing drinks.
I love weekends!
got to go. Kath
I thought you met Jazz during his Seattle daze. So it was more recently than I thought. :) Still greater than 12 years ago. He'd only moved from the greater Philly area just before meeting me at the animal shelter. I'm in the Blogosphere and have been for a few years now, but have been lazy and never sent you a link (or half a dozen other things that a good correspondent ought to do).
He's moved around the country as much as I have, but I think he's definitely got me beat on the international travel. I've only been to Canada, Britain, and a short trip to France for Lunch.
IT snowed! My first *** Snow!
I slept and the world was black and wet with rain. I woke and the world is white and wet with snow!
The city is welcoming you back.
Of course, the snow is rapdly turning grey, black from all the firecracker soot. Sigh...
Don't spoil it... it snowed - Dreamy
yes, no spoiling the fun with your reality, froog!
i actually opened all the windows this morning and aired out the apartment this morning (judging by your pics in the other post - you may want to do the same!)... first time I was able to do that and NOT choke on soot, cement dust, and carcinogens.
(of course, now, night has arrived, the snow has stopped/melted and my world is once again dry and windy and filled with bombblasts - sigh.)
I tried to leave couple of comments during the event - have only just noticed they seem to have got lost somehow. Very strange!!
Aleks the Crazy Pole evidently meant to say that people might NOT be coming because of the rain, but committed a typo. This was his excuse for eating ALL the potato salad himself. You know what Poles are like with potatoes!
His prediction was sadly true. A good 20 or so people were discouraged from joining us because the weather was so miserable. Still a reasonable turnout over all, though. I dread to think how much worse the cleanup might have been with 70-odd revellers instead of 50.
Ah well, I suppose I'd better 'close' the party blog now.
No, please, do continue to comment here, if you feel so moved. But..... it was supposed to be a kind of VAGUELY contemporaneous thing, you know.
Problem was that very few of my buddies in the UK use the Internet at the weekend. Also, most of them are obstinately habituated to E-MAILING me rather than leaving comments here.
So, really, it's not like I have NO FRIENDS. It's just that I have hardly any blog readers!!
Sorry sweetie, I was glamming up, then cleaning up, then cooking at the appointed times, in preparation for MY party!!
We had a fabulous evening here, no idea how many turned up but far more than this little house could accomodate, so we were spilling out onto the drive and next door and annexing next-door-but-one's-toilet.
Watched the lunar eclipse and sang very very loudly. Dancing came later, followed by falling over the trampoline...who put that up in the living room, huh? And finally, falling downstairs into dogs bed and cutting my nose, look like "HERE'S JOHNNY!" now.
Well my love, no photos to share, so that's the news.
The food was my main point of pride for the day (the reason the kitchen was in that horrible state). I did manage to produce: an OK potato salad (fairly bog-standard, but from a Jamaican recipe website; slightly let down by too-thick but not very tasty local mayonnaise), an eventually OK citrus rice salad (the major 'disaster' among my efforts: I hadn't managed to chill it quickly enough, since the bowl was too big to close the fridge door on; hence the rice dried out rather badly [evidently this is a known problem with cold rice dishes, but I hadn't attempted one before], and had to be painstakingly 're-cooked' in a series of small batches), a HUGE (if slightly late in the day) bowl of Jamaican-style 'rice & peas' (cooked up with coconut milk and some wicked spices), jerk chicken (40 wings and 30 large drumsticks, prepared in 2 slightly different versions of the marinade) approx. 12lbs of mutton curry (I couldn't get goat!), and a bottomless bowl of Planter's Punch (sweetened with some home-made gomme syrup.... my first attempt at which had got burnt by my ridiculously hot gas stove, but was converted into toffee as a serendipitous chef's treat!).
The casualties of my oversleeping on the morning of the party were the home-made still ginger ale (I had made enough syrup to produce gallons of the stuff, but ran into logistical problems of not having enough ice or enough jugs to serve it with) and the vegetable rundown.
This last item had actually been by far the most time-consuming of the lot to prepare, since it required huge amounts of coconut milk ('rundown' is coconut milk slowly boiled down over the course of a number of hours into a thick brown 'custard'), an item which suddenly seemed to be in short supply around town and required several far-flung shopping expeditions to acquire; also a wide selection of hard-to-come-by vegetables. I spent 6 or 7 hours at the stove making two batches of 'rundown', prepped all my vegetables, made mad last-minute shopping trips to try to find additional spices.... and then just didn't have time to cook up the bloody dish.
I was so frustrated that I made it the next day, and split it with my veggie friend Cath (who was the main reason I had undertaken to make it in the first place). It was bloody delicious!! Sorry, all you other party-goers - you really missed out there!
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