Monday 2 June Happy Anniversary

It's a bit cooler this morning but still a great day to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Vicki and Joe moving from Richmond to Hedley. Best decision they ever made apart from getting married! Friends have been invited to join us for an afternoon garden party. The food is being catered for by Sal, the lady who made the spinach cake. This time we have a chicken cake, savoury tomato cake and spinach cake. Dessert is honey cake and cake cake. The garden is looking very festive and we set up the tables and chairs under the car port.

People start arriving and soon enough there is lots of chatter, story telling, eating and drinking. What a lively bunch and there are some wonderful characters amongst them.

I really have been accepted by this little community and they are working out whose property I can buy to live here! Shirley and Pixie are both delightful and amazing women who I loved getting to know. They are my Hedley equivalent of Margaret and Faye back home!

Sylvia presented Vicki with one of her home made meat pies as an anniversary gift. Not only did it look amazing, I'm assured it will taste the same but Vicki isn't indicating that I'm invited to share it with her and Joe just yet! Sylvia tells me the story about the very special pure tin that the pie has been made in. She is a keen baker and cook, supposedly Similkameen's versionof Martha Stewart but without the criminal conviction. Anyhow, she saw this particular pie tin advertised and really really really wanted it, but they were really hard to come by. Think of Downton Abbey era and the pie tins cook would have used. Sylvia had thought they were English but found out they were actually French made in very limited amounts and then exported to England. She eventually found one available online and even though it was about $150 she had to have it. She was very excited and eagerly awaited its arrival from the UK. What took some of the shine off it, was when it finally arrived in the country, the duty and excuse she had to pay on it sent the total price of it to nudging $400... I think she now has it in her will that she has to be buried with it!

The afternoon is a great success and the last guests leave about 7ish. I have started preparing the steak and veg filling for the pies Vicki and I are making for Wednesday's community lunch. I usually cook the filling in my pressure cooker but as Vicki doesn't have one of those I need to make sure the meat is really tender so do my own version of a slow cooler in a large pot on the stove top. No one is particularly hungry for dinner so I attempt to finish off the remaining ginger beef from the other night but even that's too much while Vicki and Joe eat a Scotch egg that John (yes, he's English) had made and brought to the party. Eventually it's time for bed when I'm confident that the pie meat is cooked just right, thanks to Joe's taste testing. Vicki gets stressed about whether the day will go right, whether people will come, whether there's enough food, etc, etc, but she admits that it has been a lovely day. People clearly enjoyed themselves and there was so much food that everyone got sent home with food parcels. And as a bonus she got to wear what is likely to now be her favourite dress that Narelle (our gorgeous second cousin who we love to bits) sent over for her!

Happy 4th anniversary of living in Hedley to Vicki and Joe. I loved sharing the celebration (and my fruit skewers proved very popular!)