When we were still working (gosh that was a lot of years ago now), we always started our week-ends by having a Finger Food dinner on Friday nights. It was often the only night of the week that I had an alcoholic beverage, and when coupled with the Finger Food it seemed to jet propel us out of the working week, and into the relaxation of the week-end quickly. Our working days are long since behind us, but it’s a tradition we’ve continued on with. It keeps us in touch with what day of the week it is, and without a few little rituals kept for certain days we’d be sure to lose touch.

Friends are up here in Broome for a month staying in accommodation. We invited them to join us for our Finger Food Friday at Gantheaume Point. We could watch the sun go down together.

Not having brought my thermos server with us on this trip, I had to think what food would work and how to keep it hot. We were picking Jill and John up at 4.30 so timing was everything. Dip and crackers – no problems, they’d stay cool in a cool bag, only I forgot to put the crackers in. Luckily I’d also packed some celery and capsicum pieces. Dessert also was easy, 4 supermarket creme caramels, cream to dollop, and some fresh raspberries. A container of coleslaw made earlier in the day for our burgers also went into the cool bag. The cold food was easy. I didn’t know if my idea to keep our mains hot would work….

I don’t have an oven in the caravan, but I do have an air fryer. I put marinated chicken drumsticks into the air fryer at 3.30pm. I peeled the outside leaves back on four fresh corn cobs, removed the silk, replaced the leaves and wrapped each one individually in foil. (I’ve done this before and heated them in the coals of fire. Providing the silk is removed, and they’re wrapped up well, it works a treat. The silk will burn). These I placed in a dry frypan over the gas and kept turning them to get them hot through. I cooked mini burger patties in a second frypan, (just a flattened ball of minced beef – not extra lean, extra lean won’t stick together), and I wrapped small brioche hamburger rolls in foil. These I also heated in a dry frypan. Everything had to be turned often to prevent it from burning, and timed it all so as to come off the heat as close as we could get to 4.15pm. That’d give us time to get everything in the car, and be on time to pick up our guests. Whilst I dealt with the cooking, which took a bit of juggling, Paul packed chair’s, table, plates, music etc into the car. Jill and John were bringing the drinks.

I didn’t know if what I’d planned would keep things hot enough. Just before 4.15pm I tightly wrapped the cooked drumsticks in foil and then wrapped them in a towel. Same with the cooked burger patties. The corn cobs and small burger buns were already foil wrapped and were hot, these also got wrapped up in a towel, and everything then went into an insulated cooler bag. I made sure there were no gaps – (no cooler pack of course – it had to stay hot).

So – did it work, did it stay hot? We ate dinner to the dulcet tones of Rod Stewart’s Great American Song Book. Firstly our dip and celery, (minus the crackers). We didn’t linger too long before we put the hot food onto the table. I didn’t want to chance it cooling down to much. First the chicken and corn, then the burgers. The chicken was fine, still nice and warm and tender and juicy. The corn as still warm, but not piping hot. Dobs of butter dotted over it didn’t melt. The burgers followed. The rolls had burnt a little on the tops in the frypan, but they too were okay. I’m sure the wine that Jill and John brought helped everything else to be acceptable. The same food without any wine, and eaten around a normal dining table may have allowed the preparation flaws to show a little more….. Dessert followed. That was fine.

It was just after 4.30pm when we arrived at the beach. As the tide was on the way out, we parked with the boot of our car facing towards the water’s edge, and set up our table and chairs within about 2 meters of the shoreline. The photo below was taken about an hour later – the water’s edge was a a lot more than 2 meters away! That’s Broome, that’s the Broome tides.

Broome is towards the eastern side of WA, so the sun comes up a bit earlier in the day, and also sets a bit earlier than in does in the metropolitan area in Perth. This following photo was taken at 6.23pm. The sun had long gone. With such beautiful warm days, it’s alway a bit of surprise when you look at your watch here and realise it’s barely late afternoon and already pitch black. You’ll notice this following photo is also a little hazy. That’s from the night time dew which was making the air damp by this stage. It was still around 20 degrees though, so a lovely warm evening, despite the dew. The stars were plentiful and beautiful.

Eating dinner as we watch the day turn into night overlooking in the beach is one of our greatest pleasures in life. A simple pleasure, that’s priceless! I do hope Jill and John enjoyed it too.