My Advent Calendar – 16 Dec – Xmas Dinner with the Possums

No, we didn’t go outside and eat with wildlife. The Possums are a group of girlfriends and before we go any further, I’ll explain the name.

Possums in New Zealand and Australia are different to the ones found in North America. Image source

The story starts in the 80’s with Dame Edna Everage, the alter ego of an Australian comedian called Les Humphries. As you can see from the following clip, she calls everybody “possum”.

One of my friends from musical theatre also started calling people “possum”. Possum nicknames developed for quite a few of her theatre friends. But “the” Possums are her inner circle of half a dozen – Tarty, Sultry, Latte, Posh, Dusty and EFT. We have known each other for about 20 years, have a private FB group, meet up for dinner whenever we can and, once a year, go away for our “Possum retreat”. A weekend of eating, drinking, talking, laughing, crying, singing, dancing and general mayhem.

Some get-togethers include our better halves, and the Christmas dinner is one of them. Usually a pot luck at someone’s house, but this year we went to The Bresolin. If @frot and I eat out, there are a few favourite places where we know we can get something we can eat, and Bresolin is one of those.

One of my favourite dishes, in the Feast section of their menu, is the 12 hour slow roasted shoulder of lamb. When I was eating Carnivore, I put a pretty good dent in it by myself, but normally, there’s enough to share with a group, when you add some sides.

Eight of the others indulged in a feast – a lamb shoulder, a pork leg roast, roast chicken with miso stuffing and several vegetable side dishes. But we each felt like eye fillet steak and ordered our own. Frot had the caramelised cauliflower side dish. And I had a starter of calamari. All very delicious.

The 11 of us had a private room upstairs, which was nice. On other occasions we’ve eaten in the downstairs courtyard, which is a bit more casual. Rather than bore you with a photo of the table or our meals, Frot took this photo of a painting on the wall instead.

We play the Secret Santa game too, but with just 1 x $5 present each. You’d be surprised, but you can actually buy some quite reasonable things for $5. One of the ones we put in was a $5.99 (is that cheating just a little?) miniature of Bombay Sapphire gin. That was a popular choice.

Frot got trapped down my end of the table for a while, amongst all the girls, but when his eyes started to glaze over, we sent him down the other end for boy talk with the other husbands.

After a very pleasant evening, with plenty of food, drink, conversation and hilarity, we ended up getting home too late to post. And this morning was full on with work (!) hence the very late post. Only a few hours till you find out what today’s topic is…

• Day 1 – Carol singing with the NZ Symphony Orchestra
• Day 2 – Kilbirnie Santa Parade
• Day 3 – Posting overseas Xmas cards & a Xmas themed exercise class
• Day 4 – Last minute book buying
• Day 5 – Last choir rehearsal for the year
• Day 6 – Choosing gifts for the Xmas game
• Day 7 – Xmas lunch with my exercise class
• Day 8 – Xmas spiced nuts
• Day 9 – Xmas tree time
• Day 10 – Last arthritis class for the year, and a sugar free brownie recipe
• Day 11 – A choir performance
• Day 12 – Taking marinated chicken wings to the choir Xmas party
• Day 13 – The NZ local xmas cards & some e-cards
• Day 14 – Planning the Xmas menus and best dessert ever
• Day 15 – Making gluten & sugar free Xmas cakes

Thanks for reading

Unless otherwise stated, photos by @frot. Video from YouTube.

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