Foody Friday family barbeque

Two years agoo, my father died of Alzheimer disease just like my father in law did last week...
Since the dead of my father we try to come together with the family around the date that dad was born and have a get together in his memory. We had started having these Birthday BBQ a few years before Dad died and mom tought it would be a good idea to keep doing them and so remembering Dad's birthday by.
This gathering took place last sunday.We where lucky with the weather and
like always we had a good day with lots of food and drinks and with lots of laughs.
Of course I had to make something too and I invented a summer vegetable salad that I named:

Victorine kitchen garden salad.

Victorine is my fathers mother and she was a farmers wife. They had a fabulous kitchen garden of witch I have fond memory's of. See the september topic of red apples from last year.

So in honour of her and her kitchen garden I made this salad.
It contains masses of fresh veg and a rather special dressing.

Combine steamed of parboiled pieces of carrot, green beans, snowpeas, cauliflower, white Belgian Asparagues together with raw pieces of celary, zucchini and tiny tomatoes.
I cook all my vegetables separate because they all need different cooking times. I leave them crunchy as well. You af course can take other vegeatbles also.

Then I created this dressing

Creamy sour cream and lemon dressing

Combine one small tub of sour cream with two heaped TS of good mayo.
Put 4 tablespoons of white wine vinigair in ( mine was flavered with minth), salt, pepper, some dryed salad herbs and the grated rind of a washed and untreaded lemon. It gives you a thick creamy dressing. Make it fairly acid at this time since. The salad needs this.

Toss together an hour before serving. The vegatables wil dilute the saladdressing a bit.

As always my younger brother was the barbeque master.

Here we are still on the appetizersGuacamole and a spicy cold mango soup and spicy meatballs with tzaziki.

After the appetizers there chicken drumsticks, pork tenderloin, small steaks, lam cutlets, sausages and all different kind of salads to go with it. For desert I made my mini cupcakes. Mom said, not to much and to big since I just want a little nibble to go with the coffee. I said of course,Mom and brought 60 tiny cupcakes.....Lemon cupcakes with lemoncurd buttercream and blueberry topping.And the all time favorite chocolade cupcakes with pink buttercream and raspberry topping. Of course there where way to many as there was way to much food anyway but I did not hear complains when they where asked to take the leftovers home. I heard the last cc 's where eaten yesterday and they where as nice as they where on sunday! I am still looking for insets for the cakeboxes for mini cupcakes. Can find them anywhere in Europe and the American shops won't send them because I do not want 1000 or so and posting is so expensive! If anyone can help it would be most apreciated.

It was a very nice family day and the star of the day was of course.....the latest addition to our family, our little granddaughter, Anne-Fleur!

Garden Party 2

My son and I with Anne-Fleur in her lace baptism dress. The same dress that her daddy wore 35 years agoo.

As said, I actually had 2 garden party's this weekend. On saterday we had the baptism of our beautiful granddaughter, Anne-Fleur and we had a family garden party to celebrate.
I made a big cold buffet for all the 30 guests. It was magic. The sun was there and there was lots of joy and laughter.
The garden was decorated with all pink pelargoniums and white Hydrangea's en blue Petunia's and Pink heartshape ballons.
On the table I had flowery table cloths and bouquets of pink, orange, red and dark pink roses.

But just let me show you some pictures.

My first attempt at an iced cake I made for this party. Vanilla cake with a chocolate ganache filling topped with pink icing and chocolate hearts and the letter A.Flowery and summery tablecloths with the rose bouquets and pink ballons.The terrace set with tables for 8.

After these pictures people started coming in and since I did all the catering myself I had no time to take pictures of the family. So I give you this picture of the new mom and her little girl.

Today, June 1st, we had another party for 80 people also celebrating the baptism and birth of Anne-Fleur. The fact it was also our 36 th wedding anniversery was of no importence today.Friends and workmates where invated to a party with drinks and lots of fine fingerfood to celebrate the birth of Anne-Fleur.
I made 18 different kind of fingerfood, going from cold pea soup to salmon marinated in olive oil and lemon juice, accompanied by green apple, dryed apricots filled with feta cheese and wrapped in bacon to stawberry's in limoncella and little mini muffins.
All in all about 700 little "amuse geule's".
For this second party with put a lot of small tables all over the garden and decorated them with Kaffe Fassett tableclots.
Here are some pictures.
The garden set for the second party with the flag banner I made for Anne-Fleur.




Lots of glasses for lots of drinks.

The simple snackfood that was on the table for the children. From all the other food I have no pictures because I was to busy making them.

Lots of happy chatting people. After a while all the small tables where put together to make 2 big tables.

The very last and not the most beautiful plate of snacks. Cherry muffins with chocolate cream and a fresh raspberry topping. This was supposed to be the topping for the chocolate muffins and these ones where supposed to get a vanilla cream topping with a fresh cherry on top. But after a beautiful sunny weekend, at six pm, half an hour before the end of the party it started to rain a little. So the muffins where rushed out by my son without the right topping.Only the last ones had this topping. I had baked 70 little muffins and they where eaten in 5 minutes.
Luckely the rain did'nt come true so people stayed a while longer.
It was truly a magnificent weekend but now dear friends, I am dog tired and I am going to put the cats to bed and myself too. Enjoy the garden party. Forgive me but I will not be visiting you tonight (it is half past 11 pm here in Belgium) but will visit you all tomorrow.

Garden Party to come

Hello fellow bloggers,

We are actually having a garden party today so bear with me and come and visit me late today since I am very busy organising this party. We are celebrating the baptism of our granddaugher and I am hosting two party's this weekend. We had one on saterday for 30 family members and today I am hosting another party for about 80 people. I do all the catering myself so come and visit our party's and my garden later today!

Busy, busy, busy... Druk, druk, druk...

No time to blog this week. I am very busy because I am hosting a quiltday at my house next saterday. I have been a member of a quiltforum for more then a year and I thought it was time to host a quiltday in Belgium.
The forum is Dutch and the members are mostly Dutch. Almost all the gatherings are in Holland and if you like me don't like to travel and do not drive a car it is almost inpossible to join those gatherings.
12 Dutch and Belgian lady's will join me at my home next saterday. You want believe how much preparation this takes. I need the whole week to clean the house, bake and cook for lunch and prepare the workshop.
In the mean time all the daily things have to be done too.
The kittens have to be weened this week and I had to bring them downstairs so they could start to join every day life. In bringing them downstairs, I had to move around the whole sitting room! This was not the best week to have to do that but it had to be done this week. They are getting a bit to big to stay upstairs in their birth quarters.

Ik heb deze week niet veel tijd om te bloggen want ik bent aanstaande zaterdag de gastvrouw voor een bijeenkomst van quilters van een quiltforum. Al meer dan een jaar ben ik lid van dat forum en het werd tijd dat een aantal onders ons elkaar eens leerden kennen. Als je gelijk ik niet graag reis en je dan ook nog eens geen auto rijdt dan wordt het moeilijk om aan zulke bijeenkomsten deel te nemen. Daarom heb ik voorgesteld om zelf gastvrouw te zijn,
Het forum is Nederlands en de meeste bijeenkomsten hebben plaats in Nederland. Daarom nu eens een dag in België waar uiteraard ook onze Nederlandse vriendinnen welkom zijn.

Maar je gelooft niet hoeveel voorbereiding zo'n dag van 6 uren vraagt. Ik ben er de hele week zoet mee. Het huis moet gepoetst worden , er moet een workshop worden voorbereid en er moet gekookt worden voor de lunch.
Het moest natuurlijk treffen dat het ook net deze week de hoogste tijd was dat de kittens naar beneden kwamen om deel te nemen aan het dagelijkse leven. Dat wilde zeggen dat om die de ruimte te geven dat de hele woonkamer moest worden geherorganiseerd. Maar ik kon het niet langer uitstellen.

A short word about the two quilts you see in the picture.
The first one is the first quilt that I made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics and the first quilt ever that I made axactly like it was in the book. I still love it. Normally is sits on the bed in the guestbedroom / computer/ sewing room. But when I have kittens in that room, it is put away for safekeeping.

The other quilt is a quilt that I made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics and other yellow/green and orange fabrics. I had it on the guestroom bed last year when my husband had a depression and the guestbedroom became my safehaven. It is now owned by my niece, Kristal who loves these bright and sunny colors. She is Leo and this are the colors of the birthsign Leo.
I have to go now, lots to do. See you next week!

Een kort woordje over de quilts in de foto's. De eerste quilt is de eerste quilt die ik maakte in Kaffe Fassett stoffen. Het was ook de allereerste quilt die ik exact namaakte zoals hij in het boek stond. dat had ik in 25 jaar quilten nooit eerder gedaan. Hij ligt normaal altijd op het bed in de gastenkamer.Maar als ik er kittens heb wonen dan wordt hij voor alle veiligheid opgeborgen.
De tweede quilt maakte ik ook gedeeltelijk in Kaffe Fassett stoffen maar ook in andere gele/oranje en groene lapjes. Vorige zomer, toen m'n man z'n depressie had, lag hij op het bed in de gastenkameer/computer/naaikamer die op dat moment mijn toevluchtsoord was.
Nu is hij in het bezit van m'n nichtje die dol is op deze zonnige kleuren. Zij heeft dan ook het sterrebeeld Leo/ Leeuw en dit zijn helemaal de kleuren van dit sterrebeeld.

Nu ga ik verder werken.Het zal wel volgende week worden voor ik opnieuw de tijd heb om weer te bloggen.