’twas time for a soirée…..afternoon tea with a very small group of friends (hubby limited me….else he says I would have invited 100 people! hahahaha, he certainly knows me too well!!)
I love to entertain….I hate to prep….Prepping is the stuff that makes me wonder why I decide to entertain in the first place. But I cannot help it, to entertain is an addiction….it’s such a good feeling to have friends over and just chill and enjoy great company! that’s the essence of it….and food. there’s gotta be food.
Some of the ladies knew each other….some didn’t, we ended up doing an Ellen selfie even!
The men on the other hand, took their time, quietly wondering how their wives managed to get them there when they didn’t quite know any of the dudes…but let’s hope they ended it knowing they would see each other again some time! coz the girls will certainly meet up again!
writing is amazing…but at times like these, it’s overrated. pictures say it better.
*warning* many of the pictures have a DISTINCT pink tinge, this is not a broken camera issue, it’s because the table was housed in a glorious neon pink tent-gazebo thingy.
I made my roasted butternut salad
an avo&biltong salad (will explain below)
sticky cinnamon buns (recipe must come soon!)
Chocolate cake of course, a fehmcake tower, mini Smoked Salmon croissants, Prawn bisque with garlic buttered Ciabatta toasts, Tater (potato) nachos (tooooo easy a recipe!), fruit bowl with mango, sweet melon, grapes, pineapple, pomegranate rubies and fresh figs,
samoosas, doughtnut muffins (not that happy with the recipe so not sharing that one), Yums Easy Cheap dessert (not so cheap but definitely super easy!)
Rocky Road (recipe will be up ASAP!) because this was the bees knees!
& I made a lemon trifle with lemon poppy seed cake, lemon curd and topped it with meringue and raspberries…forgot to take pics of this one!
And I was so blessed by guests who brought me flowers (I love big bunches of flowers, makes me feel so pretty….no idea why), choc chip cookies, vanilla cuppies and paella (my supper for the night thereafter because we didn’t even get to it!)
Drinks…there were many drinks to go around including the most amazing Iced Tea combinations from Toni Glass, I was lucky enough to get to taste these when I popped into Pick & Pay earlier this month and it was so yummilicious that I HAD to buy a few bottles for the soirée!
We had tea from Five Roses & Tea Forte, and for the coffee lovers, we had Arabic Qahwa as well as Mon Tresór instant coffee….for the kiddos we had juice and milk aaannnnddddd flavoured sippy straws for them to plonk into their milk.
The table…..what fun!! I was positively uncontrollably excited to finally do a chalkboard table setup! So off I went the late late afternoon before the big day, searching for chalkboard paint before the stores close! Came home bursting to get started but the Mr decided he would only do it in the morning! I resisted the urge to do it myself…mainly because I still had a lot of prepping to do! He painted a door that I set onto two trestles for the food and I added a smaller table on the front for the crockery. Not very clear on the pic below because of the pink reflection from the tent…but here goes anyway.
I posted a picture up on my Instagram a little while ago with whisks that had candles in them, you could not really see it in the pictures but I most definitely tried it out!
Super fun to do! And we hung it over the chalkboard table…
And hung little teapot-printed mini lanterns over the eating table (mini lanterns were from Typo)
and a bucket of the cooled drinks were placed on the table within easy reach
Quick recipe – Biltong and Avo Salad
Get your greens ready, any greens you like.
Add in some julienned carrots (the bowls next to them has julienned beetroot for the roasted butternut salad)
Some red onion (bean sprouts for the butternut salad)
Then you want to slice your avos, sprinkle with s&p and spritz with some lemon juice to delay the browning. I set up this salad as the very last thing I did for the day so that it was laid out just before the guests arrived.
Throw on the avo and some thinly sliced moist biltong and you’re done!
Check those little glass bowls next to the salad? I filled each with a teaspoon of chutney and topped with a Samoosa, made it so easy to just grab a Samoosa and your own chutney so that you could, dare I say it, double dip! Eeeekkk lol!
Enjoy!
~Fehmz~