BBQ for any and all occasions

Christmas is around the corner. Toong (Winter Solstice) is the next day. And the Chinese celebrates that with Tong Yuen (a sweet drink with colored flour balls). As in the past, I would use this as an excuse to have a BBQ at home and invite some friends over to share in this. What is a BBQ if you don't have a crowd to share and enjoy the food?

For this year, I thought I will invite a different group of friends for the BBQ. Of course the regulars must come - if for nothing else, the regulars are the ones with kids and kids just love to burn something.As the invitations started going out, my wife was getting worried. Just how many people are you inviting? er... 20... wait a minute... it's 25 now. Uhm.... 30? We had to cap it at 35 as more than that meant a few of the guests would be standing around with no seats . no standing place at the BBQ pits and so on.

As usual, I do all the marketing for the BBQ stuff - chicken, Beef, Lamb, vege, etc. I had them cleaned and marinated by early morning. This year, I told the guests it was a BBQ pot luck, so some of them chipped in with Salad (Yee Ling), Fruits (Cindy), Fritters looking like mini Yew Char Kuei(Val), Mee Hoon and Rendang(V and M), cake (Siew Mei) and after a while - I lost track as the guests were all over the place.

My neighbor 2 doors away was having the Malay wedding ceremony at the same time and so the streets around my house turned into one big parking lot!.

Almost everything was ready by 4pm and my wife said - let's test out the Korean/Japanese BBQ set first as this was the first time we were using it. For this BBQ, I had 2 regular pits and one electric one. Sure!! Why not? Switched on the electric BBQ thingy , popped some Moo on it and tried a few different heat settings. My my my, it cooked fast and tasted good. In fact, it tasted so good that Yoke Lang just could not stop (actually none of us did) and so the testing phase became a full blown BBQ with the 14 of us who were already there. Half the plate of Moo (beef lah) was polished off. We also finished off 2 bunches of lettuce. Used that to wrap the BBQ meat before munching on it. Delicious!!!.

We only started the fire for the regular pit at about 5pm. Just so that we have enough ambers to get the BBQ going full swing once the rest of the guests showed up. A slight drizzle caused some concerns but they dried up very fast as the wind blew away the clouds. I had a third pit (electric planned). That was to use my convection oven to do up the lamb chops. There must have been a loose connection in the darn thing. It was coming on very intermittently. So I gave that up and used the regular pits to cook the lamb chops. Worked fine!

Besides eating, drinking and exchanging presents, the kids also had fun playing Monopoly with CREDIT CARDS. That's the world they live in today and most probably grow into. And I also learn (yea old dogs still have to learn) that young girls can be so emotional even at games. Amelie, Siew Mei's youngest caused the game to come to a crashing halt because she had to GO TO JAIL. She was so upset that she just sat there and cried. In the end, we asked Alex to pay for her bail just so that she won't miss a turn. But that kinda spoilt the whole game and the boys in the game started playing on the PSP and gameboy.Everyone else had a good time (I hope) eating and drinking and chit chatting. I think such occasions are great to catch up on what's happening with your friends.

After the guests left around elevenish, we cleaned up as much as possible before calling it a day a little past midnight.

Happy Toong and Merry Xmas and Happy New Year everybody.