Bowls, Beer and a BBQ

I have been organising a barefoot bowling function for the social club at work over the past few months, finally after much preparation the day came yesterday, whilst I was preparing the last few things for the BBQ the heavens opened up and I thought for sure everything was going to be ruined.  But after quickly sending out an email stating come rain, hail or shine we were going ahead, the sun reappeared and by the time people started rocking up a few hours later, it was a scorcher.

The event was held at the Yokine Bowling Club, and what a great venue for it, it was fantastic, as were the people at the club, ever so helpful and concerned for us to enjoy our function, the facilities here are second to none, the greens, BBQ area and bar were all first rate.

There were 36 people attending, the event included a game of lawn bowls, a BBQ and a few beers to quench our thirsts, and we were all very thirsty and with a couple of beers come a healthy appetite, so it was a good thing there was plenty to eat!

For the meat we had Scotch Fillet steaks, sausages and tandoori chicken, the fillet I picked up in bulk from Drovers in Joondalup and had to butcher it into steaks myself, something that is harder than it looks I was to find, but it worked out well and the meat was delicious. The chicken I prepared at home the night before and was served cold, this is the one thing I would do differently next time by cooking on the day instead. 

The BBQ’s at the club are fairly new, big 4 burners and stainless steel hotplates, fuelled with natural gas, took a bit to get them going, but found it a lot easier once the gas was switched on!  The huge cooking surface accommodated 100 snaggers in the one go, which made cooking a lot quicker, something I appreciated being such a hot day, as I did the huge fan one of the club members came out and turned on for me, as noisy as it was it was worth its weight in gold!

For the salads I prepared a Potato salad with Dijon mustard mayonnaise from a recipe I found on Taste, this was a great salad and one that had people coming back for seconds, I pretty much followed the recipe as it was, just adjusting the quantities to size it up for a big mob, using 2.5 kilos of chat potatoes.

I made a Nutty Brown Rice Salad from a recipe I found online from a channel nine production, it was very similar to a recipe Jo makes, just had a few more ingredients, again, whilst I followed the recipe I adjusted ingredients to 3 times the size, I love this salad it is so full of flavour and the toasted seeds used give a great crunch factor, it also looks great once served up.

Whilst I was preparing stuff in the kitchen, I showed Jo what I had for the garden salad platters and she felt I did not have quite enough, so I brought some extra leafy things to pad them out, ended up with four beautiful looking platters, of which 2 and a half were not touched, still better to have too much than not enough, and then we also did not expect the potato and rice salads to go off like they did!

To add a bit of variety I made a couple of small pickled tomato, onion and cucumber salads and opened a couple of cans of beetroot, along with the bread rolls the food table looked pretty amazing and it was great to see everyone loading their plates and sitting together to eat on a lovely hot evening! 

Once fed we were all out again on the bowling rinks, rolling up well into the night and the beer was so chillingly cold, the only way to have it on such a hot night was going down nicely too! To see all the photos from the night click this link.