Meatballs: a question

The question is: do you fry your meatballs? Or not?

Last night, the secrets of my cheating kitchen were out. I made the meatball sauce before everyone arrived (I can hardly bear to tell you ... slowly sweated huge quantity of pre-chopped onions together with pre-cubed carrot and swede, then added commercial tomato-y pasta sauce), but I hadn't lobbed in the meatballs. So the kitchen was full of people to watch my mass-catering shame. Ready-made meatballs chucked straight from the packet into the sauce.

This sparked a bit of a conversation ..."I'd never have thought to do that." "I always fry my meatballs first," etc etc. Me thinking, I wish I'd made these myself, I wish the sauce was more carefully made.

But we set it on the table, together with baked potatoes and the remains of the lunch picnic, and whoosh - it vanished in moments, a momentary lull in the ceaseless chatter of "my" crew, their parents, and my family (husband, children, parents, sister-from-America-with-her-three-boys). Then out for a game of rounders in the fast-fading light. It wasn't about the food.

A week at Henley Royal Regatta

Too busy to blog properly, but someone asked me to tell them about the regatta, so here are a couple of pictures. This is a pretty typical regatta scene - it shows "my" crew, Newport Aquatic Center from Newport Beach California, wending their way down to the start during the lunch break for a spot of practice.

The other photo shows my sister just about to leave for the enclosures - wellies essential this year ... and none of us can remember a year when the Stewards announced that wellies could be worn. She borrowed these from Lettice.

Just off to produce supper for about 20-25 ... not very elegant - meatballs and baked potatoes, combined with leftovers from our lunch picnic, a joint effort attended by five or six families. Then a game of rounders. Lucius has mown the lawn specially, the first break in the rain long enough to get all the grass cut.