A tale of two dinners
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Christmas Eve was scorchio! 33° outside and a lot warmer than the 18° inside the boat! This nice weather was, of course, because we now have our new ‘boom bimini’ to keep out the rain. We tidied up the boat for Christmas and took the children to the beach.
18° inside, 33° outside!
Christmas dinner number 1 happened on Christmas
Eve. We had invited Nicholas and Aline (RAPA NUI) for Christmas dinner – which
in Christmas Day Christmas morning dawned bright and sunny and – thankfully – Father Christmas had found us! The children were delighted with their presents, including new rucksacks, fountain pens, GameBoy games and accessories, DVDs (Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3), surf Bratz (Beth), a fishing jacket (Bryn), sweets and surf dude/chick key rings. At 10 am we hosted Bucks Fizz and nibbles for people we knew on the pontoons. This was also breakfast (olives, nuts and chocolate). Christmas dinner number
2 Christmas dinner number 2 happened at about 3 pm on Christmas Day, and we were joined by Nicholas and Aline (again) and Mike (DYNAMITE). We had sticky ribs (see recipe below), lashings of creamy mashed potato and sweetcorn (‘cos that was what the children voted that we should have), followed by chocolate pudding. We had musical crackers (thanks again MYMAX!) and (the adults) had far too much to drink.
The sticky numbers came with an octave of whistles in the musical crackers – maybe by next Christmas we will have got the hang of matching the numbers to the whistles for something resembling Jingle Bells!
Mike: “What number did you say I was again?” On the first mouthful of Christmas dinner, my crown (a really obvious front tooth) fell out leaving a hole that must have been at least as big as the Albert Hall (well, that’s what it felt like anyway!). I lisped my way through the rest of the day, trying not to smile too widely… Late afternoon was siesta time, and a quiet evening with a DVD. We contemplated sticking my crown back in with Superglue… The Christmas week that
was The rest of the Christmas week has gone flying by.
Boxing Day was a normal day here in
How did you spend Boxing Day? ECOVER 3 We are rubbing fenders with the famous, here in
Portimão – ECOVER 3 is spending her Christmas holidays here too! Mike Golding
had to retire from the Transat ECOVER B to B race (Salvador de Bahia in
ECOVER 3 – 20.1 metres of pre-preg carbon/honeycomb sandwich (whatever that is), with a high-tensile steel fin and lead bulb with hydraulic canting system. Unfortunately the marina staff forgot to take a few things into account when they moved her – the Great Storm and ongoing dredging in the Rio Arade will have silted up the marina basin, it was low tide on a spring (big) tide, plus the fact that she has a 4.5 metre draft…They got her well and truly wedged in the middle of the channel for 1.5 hours until the tide came in and floated her off.
The Portuguese ‘push-me-pull-you’ manoeuvre.
Look at her stern – big bottoms are obviously essential for speed! Sticky ribs 1 tablespoon clear honey 2 tablespoons tomato puree (or tomato ketchup) 2 tablespoons lemon juice 3 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon oyster or fish sauce (optional, but does improve flavour) 1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder 1 clove of garlic, crushed or finely chopped 4 tablespoons hot water Mix all ingredients until dissolved and use to marinade meat (in a non-metallic bowl) for as long as possible, preferably overnight in the fridge. Works well for spare ribs, chicken joints, and cubed pork (threaded onto skewers to cook). Arrange meat in a roasting tin, pour over any remaining marinade. Cover and roast in a moderate oven for about 1 hour until the meat is cooked and the marinade has reduced to a sticky sauce. Sufficient to marinade 750–1000 g meat; quantities can be doubled, trebled, etc. |
