Cowboy Cookout - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Saturday 1 April, 2006

by Rosemary at 8:47pm in Anything goes 2 comments Comments closed

Dan and I usually have a barbeque for friends in July, round about my birthday. This year, we've (Dan says "what's this "we"?) decided to have a themed event and to ask those attending to make a donation to farmAfrica, a charity we've supported in the past.

The theme for the day will be a western one - no surprise to those who know me. I wanted to have a cowboy / western themed wedding but I was outvoted. I did manage to get "Secret Love" sung at the wedding, but that was all.

My excuse is that, as a wee girl, my favourite TV programmes were "The High Chaparral", "Bonanza", "The Virginian" (James Drury being my first crush). And does anyone remember a programme called "Hondo" and another called "The Munroes", which was about a family of kids in the West, who had a Pyrenean Mountain Dog called Snow?

Anyway, that's the reason for the theme (also "Dances with Wolves", "Open Range" and so on). I was also lucky enough to go to Wyoming with two friends about four years ago. We stayed on the David Ranch, near Jackson and played cowboys for a week. I will never forget it and would love to do it again.

So I'm thinking about the day already; what food to do, games to play etc. A colleague from work has promised me his Karaoke machine and his C&W tapes and I'm hoping we can build a fake cow and practice roping. Pig wrestling has been ruled out for animal welfare reasons. I also have a set of Smokey's old shoes, so we can throw them at a stake. Or Meg.

Which gets me to the reason for the post. I tried a new recipe today for "Cajun Meat Loaf". I had pulled the recipe from a Tesco magazine about a million years ago but only got round to trying it today. It's very yum - we had it with baked sweet potato and salad. We've never had baked sweet potato before and we really enjoyed it. I've given Dan the recipe and he'll put it on the database when he gets a minute.