The morning is a little hard, but last night was a lot of fun, with great food and better company. The hosts put a lot of effort into making each dish and they even went to the effort of buying local crayfish, rather than the imported. There was talk of catching them next year, but I am skeptical.
In Australia, these would be called yabbies and my favorite is "red claw", but I have never been yabbying myself. I have gone crabbing once upon a time, but that is a little more active.
As you can see, our hosts put in some decoration effort too, with the napkin flowers made by their daughter, who has taken an interest in searching and making stuff from YouTube. More kids should do that, rather than watching adverts for products.
There were no kids last night though, with everyone having a babysitter for the night. The group was made up of three local couples (including us) as another set weren't able to make it from Helsinki-way, due to illness. Their loss was our gain. But, now we are in the group and we have been charged with hosting duties in 2022, which gives us time to learn to cook something.
We used to cook a fair bit, but since Smallsteps was born with food allergies, all the effort went to preparing food for her and we ended up eating whatever we could that didn't take much effort. This bad habit has continued with the renovation work and we should start breaking the cycle, as the drawbacks stack up fast.
Despite the aching head (we don't drink much often), for the rest of the day we have to dive back into the house to clean and then base paint a bit, as well as remove some piles of reno trash from the garden and I will cut the grass, now that most of the leaves are out of the way.
It was nice to finally get a little bit of much needed space away from the day in and day out of current life, as well as spend time with friends talking about all kinds of things that range from the very important to the completely useless.
A long time ago (it feels like) my own friends would gather for an annual crayfish party, which was always a highlight of the year. However, we have all moved on in some way, with some moving out of country, so the tradition was lost. I am not a fan of most traditions in the world, other than those that bring friends and family together to eat good food and talk together. The official occasion doesn't matter much, the purpose is to build relationships.
I think many people get lost in the rules of tradition, not the reason for them. The reason is always to being people closer together, and a table of good food is probably the best meeting point there can be.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
