Party Day Blog - the Garden Party

As much as this blog is meant to be a triumphant tale of effortlessly (ha!) successful entertaining, sometimes things just don't work. I was going to strike this from the record when it occurred to me that I would be doing my readers a great disservice by only sharing my great wins. So I present to you now a party-day-diary of an epic fail and hope that you can take from it these useful lessons:
1. Plan the shit out of it. (Remember this one - it will come in handy about Julyish!)
2. Do things the night before.
3. Sometimes, it's just not going to work. Live with this and move on.

6:20 am
The Wiggle wakes up, a little ahead of schedule. I'm keen to keep sleeping but Husband is also awake and gets her up to feed her. Urch.

7:15 am
The Wiggle is getting whingy, which I take as a sign that it's morning nap time. Perfect - she can nap now, I can sleep in, and then we can be at the shops for 9am. I have one last idea for sourcing some culinary lavender and need to get to Miranda today.

7:30 am
Hey Mummy, you thought you could sleep in! Ha! I want to play now. While the Wiggle destroys the house (again) I go online to see whether my lavender hunch was on track. Win! T2 (bless them) have a range of "just" teas which primarity consist of single ingredients that frankly you can get at the supermarket for a lot less. Lavender, however, is a definite win.

8:30 am
I'm starting to think about going to the shops ... the Wiggle is starting to think about her morning nap. Nap time wins. I think I might try and have that sleep in after all but it's just not happening so I get up to make the birthday cake I promised at the last minute. Clean house instead. Weather is not looking so great. Argh!

9:30 am
Call T2 Miranda to ask whether they have any lavender in stock. The extremely camp-sounding and friendly Anton puts a box aside for me. Call Mum to organise the stuff I need to borrow from her. Finally a bit of win!

10:00 am
Actually start making cake. Cut out a very cute stencil and start thinking about brown icing. Have a major 'der' moment while looking for the right food colour combination for brown - Chocolate! D'oh. Don't know why that was so hard to think of.

10:30 am
Cake in the oven. Realised that I haven't actually cooked a whole plain butter cake since ... ? Have put the timer on for 40 minutes and will just have to hope that that's the right amount of time. Also a little unsure about whether the cake tin I used was too big ... but the littler one didn't fit around the monkey stencil!

11:15 am
40 minutes turned out to be perfect. Pinned the stencil to the cake and got all the jars I could find out of the cupboard to put candles in. Nothing more I can do until the Wiggle wakes up and we can go out for supplies ...

11:45 am
Most epic morning nap ever. Wiggle awake at last and off to the shops.

1:30 pm
Get to Mum's to borrow supplies including a table. Wiggle is getting whingy. Supply borrowing turns out to be complicated and time consuming. Have minor meltdown, leave without table.

3:00 pm
Wiggle fed. Have major meltdown. The Cowboy calls at the crucial moment to tell me he can come around early to help. This saves me from complete collapse.

3:15 pm

Wiggle refuses to nap. Get the idea that a walk will be a good way to cool my head and tire out the Wiggle. Walk to Kirawee for noodle boxes. Distance is double what I'd thought it was and humidity is about 89%. Not good for improving mood.

4:30 pm
Struggle home. Abandon purchases in pram in foyer, get Wiggle to bed. Pour self a cold cider and lie down.

4:40 pm

The Cowboy arrives to save my butt. I'm still running around like a headless chicken but he is methodically asking me what needs to be done and doing it while keeping me focused on my own stuff. Start decorating the cake, which turns out to be much more difficult that I'd anticipated. Fortunately, the Cowboy makes salad boxes, peels potatoes and ices and decorates cupcakes while I'm attempting this.

5:30 pm
Miss L and entourage arrive with the rest of the food. Now there are two babies and too many people for my tiny apartment. Stuff everywhere and I'm struggling to do anything, running around and doing little bits of things. This party would definitely have benefitted from a little organisation of the written-down variety. Guests due to arrive in half an hour, house a massive mess, stuff still in car and foyer, nothing set up outside.

5:50 pm
Miss L has pretty much set up outside, thank goodness, with a table cobbled together out of two other makeshift tables. Cake is finished and somehow doesn't look half bad - although certainly not as cute as the stencil I made. Chicken is ready to go in the oven, potatoes cut up and waiting in a stock pot, cupcakes iced and on their stand and the salad boxes ready to go. House. kitchen and self still a mess.

6:10 pm
Get a text from guests to say that they are stuck in traffic and running late. General hysterical celebration. Assemble lanterns only to discover that most of them don't work. Husband, who is supposed to be at uni, arrives home to help. More hysterical celebration.

6:30 pm
Lanterns not working, hang them from trees anyway. Fill garden with jars of candles, forget to take photos. Set out a couple of little tables with huge white tablecloths on them and chairs from inside to create that awesome bring-the-indoors-out thing. All looking pretty good but while this is going on the house is still a mess and things still need doing in the kitchen.

7:00 pm
Guests of honour finally arrive after massive traffic delays. Put the chicken drumsticks in the oven (because drumsticks should only take half an hour to cook, right?) and go to sit outside in an imitation of relaxation. Salad boxes a big hit - at least something is going well.

8:00 pm
Drumsticks not cooked. Guests of honour need to leave due to tired babies. Other guests not arrived yet. Serve cupcakes and birthday cake even though dinner hasn't been served yet because, well, dinner isn't even close to ready. Monkey cake is appreciated and cupcakes are a big hit. Guests of honour leave.

9:00 pm
Other guests arrive. Get drumsticks out of oven. Flavour insipid. Begin clean up and go to bed.

So, all in all, a complete fiasco. Stay tuned for the much happier tale of Harvest Feast - the little dinner party that could!

Sutherland: Future Foodie Destination?

A few years ago, Sutherland was a bit of a gastronomic wasteland. There was a decent butcher and a pretty good (if overpriced) fruit market, but apart from that there was a Franklins, a Gloria Jeans (shudder), a couple of second-rate cafes and too many dodgy Chinese takeaways.

Don't get me wrong - there is definitely a place in the world for second-rate cafes and dodgy Chinese. Not too long ago I took delight in frequenting these places with friends who lived nearby. Now all these friends have made their escape from the Shire and I am no longer able to wake up late on a Sunday morning and say, "Hey, let's drop everything and go have brunch!" I am also, sadly, no longer able to stomach dodgy Chinese.

But Sutherland has been changing in these few years. It started with White Horse, a cafe of the variety usually seen in Surry Hills or Paddington, with proper baristas, their own beans and coffee that has recently made a list of the top 10 cafes in Sydney. And let me tell you, it's damn good.

White Horse was the start. Before long, the dodgy butcher next to Franklins got bought out and refurbished and now sells a rather wonderful range of cuts and has a small but decent deli section. It's not exactly Victor Churchill but for a small suburb it's respectable. The fish-and-chips-and-chinese deep-fried salmonella factory on Flora Street closed for a few weeks and reopened with a shiny, stainless steel interior, excellent takeaway fish and chips and a window full of very fresh-looking produce. The opening of the Supabarn also widened the food horizons. Their fresh food section, although of supermarket standard, has a huge range and should hopefully encourage competitiveness in the existing fruit market. Their deli selection is impressive (ashed goat's curd anyone?) and they have a decent range of high-quality brands. 

I knew something was really going on in Sutherland, however, when I walked through the little arcade on Eton Street and found a brand-new shiny coffee haunt with coffee that nearly rivals White Horse in taste. Two amazing coffee places? In Sutherland? Hooray!

I think I should go on a mission to make Sutherland a proper Foodie destination. We already have an annual Coffee Fair, how about a weekly or monthly Farmers Market? There's great coffee, good butchers and decent fresh food, how about a good deli? Anyone looking to start a small business?

So, Shire-bound foodies, what are your thoughts?