F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

I love house parties - so I have realised about myself. It is really fun to invite friends over and have a meal or just drinks and a good chat.

The Yeti was finally home safe last Friday, and we also found out that one of our friends recently found a new job, so I decided I wanted to throw a party to celebrate Julien's home coming and Jimme's new found job. And I wanted to make it a surprise!

I could tell I was an amateur at this because I called my friends Gen and Yihmay, and told them about this concept on holding a surprise party.. so Yihmay went, "Okay so when are you going to hand us your house keys and when should we come by the house?" - I have not thought about that. Since it was a party for both Jimme and Julien, it was going to be a tricky situation to make it a surprise for the both of them..

First, Jimme was Yihmay's boyfriend, so if Yihmay was coming to the house, then Jimme would have to come along too, and he would know there was a party going on. Second, there was no way I could take time off Julien to buy the food for dinner. Even if I managed to sneak some time off to buy enough food for 5 people, he would know straightaway once he opened the fridge. I had thought up an excuse to tell him it was just groceries that would last a week... but I didn't believe myself even. So I canned the whole idea of making it a surprise. I told Julien the party was for Jimme and I told Jimme the party was for Julien. It was starting to get too complicated.

As usual, the other hiccup was that we had to change the party day to a Sunday instead of a Saturday, because Julien and I had forgotten that we had booked tickets to a piano concert on Saturday evening, before he left for France... how silly of us. So everyone was asking if they could come earlier since Jimme was starting his first day at work on Monday and he didn't want to be late for work from a hang over.

Overall, the party was GREAT! I was really happy with how the food turned out. We had Feta cheese and cherry tomatoes as a starter, and steak as a main course. Julien was initially suggesting that I made chicken instead since he had the privilege of having lots of red meat while in France. But we got good meat so the steaks turned out really well. I was really surprised myself. Steaks are really easy to make for parties in my point of view. They cook really fast and are easy to marinate. In Singapore, we usually marinate our meats. We hardly have them plain most times.

So that's what I did. We had salad, then I made the steaks on the spot so each guest had their steak fresh from the pan. They all enjoyed it I guess, since everyone finished their food. There was no left overs. Which is great! As the chef or the cook, the satisfaction comes from when people appreciate the food you make them. Gen bought two huge tubs of ice cream, so that's what we had for dessert. Ice cream with the chocolates that Julien brought back from France!

The evening was just perfect! Lots of talking and laughing. I felt really happy after. I was on an all time high....

Here's to more house parties!