For as long as I can recall, making and sharing food has been an important part of life; at very least others making and sharing food is something I was aware of from an early age.  I remember sitting on the kitchen bench watching my Mum slather Watties tomato sauce over the top of a meatloaf, soon to be baked and served with a mountain of mashed potato and boiled broccoli.  Midweek dinner time, an event more often than not enjoyed together, heralded that most exciting of daily punctuations for my sister and me: Dad arriving home. I remember standing next to my Dad at the barbecue on Saturday evenings watching him chase freshly shucked buttered scallops around the hotplate while our family and friends gripped glasses of chilled chardonnay, waiting in anticipation.  The scallops would be heaped on a wilting paper towel and acknowledged by words of encouragement: “compliments to the chef.” Food fashions may have changed but good food is good food and they remain some of my favourite things to eat.  

This weekend or maybe last marks the proper entry back into our warmer months. It’s a late Sunday morning and I am sitting with every window open and with baskets of clean laundry sitting around my feet. It is excellent laundry weather. The Winter duvet inner is officially airing out on the line ready for its Summer hibernation. This weather mixed with all of our friends coming round last weekend reminds me fondly of the gathering we had the first weekend of March.

We finally got around to having some of our nearest and dearest Christchurch friends around to celebrate our recent(ish) engagement. The weather has been absolutely excellent lately and so we took the opportunity to bask in the sunshine outside on the deck and on the lawn. 

I fall in and out of love with food. Making something time consuming can be immensely therapeutic but the catch 22 is that stress can often dampen a love of creating.  I am back to re discovering the joy of pawing over cookbooks and scrolling through my favourites. It’s a funny one, in times of stress you often need to nourish your body and soul with good food but it is often the first thing that gets thrown to the wayside. 

It had been a while since we had people over and the thought of becoming weekend hermits, socialising with only the check out operator at Pak N Save, made me fearful we were getting a bit too comfortable.

So if the title doesn't give this post away, I will make it clear that this post is about gardening. It isn't exactly a dinner party but it is about growing our own food with the idea of being able to share it with others. Neither of us have any gardening experience and our knowledge has literally come from my mother and the internet. This adventure all started when one weekend Dylan and his Dad constructed a rather long vegetable box by the fence. It was sitting staring at us for a few more weeks before we rummaged up the courage to fill it with more than just our hopes and dreams. 

Asian cuisine is one of our favourites to eat and as we rediscovered last night, the flavours and cooking techniques between the countries within the region can be so vastly different. It was this variety that inspired us to host the second edition of The Supper Club with an Asian kitchen flair to it.