The Native Iowan

First day of the first month of 2019.

It’s a warm, sunny day here. 430pm. The day will commence its decent soon. The sun shall start sinking below the ridges and the shade shall come and the temps will drop and the insect will arrive and it’ll soon be night.

Last eve I cut a deal with my teenaged grandsons… They cooperate and I’d be their taxi for New Years Eve down at the regional hot-spot, Mooloolaba.

https://www.sunshinecoastpoint.com.au/events/mooloolaba-new-years-eve/

We live is a pretty groovy place. https://www.sunshinecoast-australia.com/sunshine-coast-tourist-map.html

So I dropped the boys off about 5pm at the beach. Angelo, Mendoza with Wade (Lale Makini’s son) got to go and bee-cool for NY’s eve.

The beach is a very cool local fun place and this year they offered live music, a fireworks show at 830 and another at 12 midnight. All in a safe, well policed and controlled environment.

So I took the boys in to town and came home to a nice pot of healthy leftovers. The rest of the family all took the little kids to the early fireworks show. I got a nice quiet house for a number of hours.

The last couple days – the last few days of 2018 have been hectic. We planned “Our Party” for Saturday the 29th. The prep and the execution of it all was a big effort. We cooked about a half-hundred-pound of beast. Fed about 50 people. I personally drank about 8-gallons of grog. Didnt get to bed until 2am. Then woke in the morn to a house filled with guests and the need for provisions and interaction. So Saturday was huge and Sunday was big, but very slow.

Sunday we cooked left overs and watched UFC and hung in the pool. Then came Monday, and NY’s eve…

The teens had a good time. Were cool. I picked them up at 2am. They’d been on the beach and in the ocean. They came home with a big bag of takeaway chickennchips. It smelled real good. They ate n went to bed.

Grace complained about the sand in the beds and their clothes this morn.

Some picts from the bbq…

I am rather proud of the bbq-pit I put together with leftover bits n pieces…

My idea was to fire-sear the beast then slow cook it in foil…

I used an old fire-chimney to burn up some real nice red-gum. 

Rubbed n marinated the beast that came from our farm…

So nice homegrown beast started on an open fire… Seared and sealed and flavoured by flame…

All up we cooked 2 large racks of rib and 4 good-sized rump-roasts… The trays on top are pumpkin and roasted potatoes…

The racks of rib were impressive, but hard to cook… Too big to manage easily so I contented myself with getting burnt regularly as I turned them.Charred on the outside but very juicy inside…

The day was sunny and bright. Our back yard is great but by default the bbq-pit was in the sun so I cooked and sweated a lot.

I stayed on water and cokes up until I got the meat ready to serve at about 3pm… And I must say I nailed it… A perfectly bbq’d beast roast…

The rib-racks could not have been better…We prepared 200 one-bite skewers…When it was time to eat no one held back…

So we started at 3pm and by 5pm there was not a scrap of meat left. 25kgs of beast cooked, and consumed…

So today is slow. We all slept in. I got the boys up about 10am and we mowed and cleaned and tidied up. Tomorrow we go back to the farm.

And life is good.

Welcome to 2019.

More later…