Yazira Yusoff: Open House

Yeayy!! It was a success!

Anyway, last weekend, we hosted a small gathering in London.

We did everything from scratch, from onde-onde to nasi briyani.

And we invited a lot of people over to Westbourne Park.

Since it was our first time preparing food for more than ten people, we didn't have the necessary and suitable cooking utensils and have completely forgotten about it. To buy those huge pots and pans would cost us our limbs, especially when we know they will stay in the cabinet forever after the first use. Hence, we decided to cook them in several batches. Not a wise one, I daresay.

It wasn't easy at all. Operations began on Friday afternoon, and went on until the next morning with less than three hours of sleep. See! How determined the chefs were to serve our guests with delicious food. However, at midnight, we could already hear whines and somebody actually suggested, why didn't we just hire a caterer and let them do the cooking while we karaoke? Ha Ha. Right. Tell us an hour before the event.

Friday, almost midnight

Saturday, look at the weary smiles

On Saturday, I literally looked like panda with under eye dark circles and eye bags from the lack of sleep. But there was still cooking and cleaning up to do. So I dragged myself to the boys' house in the morning, when the roads were still empty and shops were still close. Strangely but fortunately, Hammersmith & City line was not under maintenance. We started cooking almost immediately, while some were taking nap on the couch and some were out to buy more stuff.

And now, the pictures.

Ustaz and sons

I don't know how I did it, but I did.
I woke up at six, went to the boys' house, cooked until ten, showered and changed into baju kurung, welcomed and entertained the guests, laughed the lungs out with Abir, left at two for class, came back at five to a full house, karaoke-d, watched Lagenda Budak Setan while the others were glued to x-factor on tele, cleaned up the house and went back at ten to do research for presentation.