Birthday banquet

Well, I think DH enjoyed his birthday meal. Because we had some meat-eaters and some vegetarians coming, I'd decided to do a Chinese meal so that they could easily pick and choose which dishes they ate from.

During the afternoon I chopped, sliced and diced, until every surface in the kitchen looked like this.

I also made a chocolate birthday cake - it collapsed a bit in the middle, but nobody seemed to be complaining.


And I made DH's favourite pudding - a trifle. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the sprinkles on top are in the shape of dinosaurs - a little reference to the fact that he's seven years older than me.

This is what the table looked like before we started. For starters, we had sliced tomato, marinated cucumber, and prawn crackers.

After we'd eaten all ten dishes and before I cleared away for pudding, this is what the table looked like - not too many leftovers, which is always good to see.

It was a great evening with some lovely friends, and now we're looking forward to taking the remains of the cake and spending some time with DH's parents. I must say, though, that I'm looking forward even more to getting home this evening and putting my feet up for a couple of hours...