It’s been a quiet week, so I’ll keep this short. Nothing of note happened during the week except for work. We’re both fairly busy, although Will made time to redo our website. Et Voila! It’s done in WordPress this time, but otherwise, it keeps a lot of elements from the old site. We’ve slipped in search engine rankings recently, so we hope this will help in that regard.
It was cold and wet most of last week. We had a few days of heavy rain and occasional high winds. It’s finally come good, and we’re due for some hot, sunny days this week. I mowed the lawn mid-week, and it will need it again soon. We planted four of the remaining plants, although they weren’t quite ready. They seem to be doing ok for now, and probably enjoyed the rain.
Our main activity of the week was the Soirée Grecque on Saturday night. It was the third of three Milhac Loisirs dinners for the year. Like the last event, it wasn’t well attended, but those that did come really enjoyed it. Sophie did the catering again, and we all helped out with the preparation. I also advised on the recipes, being the only one that’s spent any time in Greece.
We met on Friday morning to peel chick peas. Sophie insisted on not using canned, which meant removing the skins ourselves. With four of us, it went quickly, and got on to other prep. We met up again on Saturday afternoon to set up the room, and continue the food prep. I returned home long enough to shower and collect Will before heading back down for 18:30 in time to meet the DJ.
There were only 45 paying guests, which was a bit disappointing. There were a couple other events in nearby villages, and lots of people go on holiday in May. We started with an apero of kir, then moved on to the soup, which was red lentil with coriander and lemon juice. The entrée was a meze of humus, tzaziki, olives, and mushrooms a la grecque. It was all home made (except the olives) and everything was lovely. The main was kebab meat served with greek salad. The meat was store bought, but luckily it was very tasty. I figured it would be lamb, but they only had a poultry / veal mix. The salad was served on a large platter, with the ingredients placed next to each other and onions and fresh oregano sprinkled on top. Dessert was individual tarts (store bought) filled with homemade almond custard. Finally, there was coffee with ouzo on the side.
The entertainment was mainly the DJ. He started with some Greek music which continued through the meal. There is a small theatre group here, and one of the members did a couple of sketches between courses. Afterwards, the DJ went into full party mode, and that’s when the fun began. His name is David and he comes from the Lot, 2 hours south of here. We were having trouble finding someone local, so I tried the guy who did our karoke evening last year and he recommended him. So he was an unknown quantity, but turned out to be the hit of the night.
He’s a small guy, and probably somewhere around my age. Man could he move! He danced and sang to most of the songs, and really got the crowd involved. We both suspected he was gay, but it wasn’t until he played YMCA that I was fairly certain. He later claimed to have a “little woman” waiting at home, but perhaps that was a euphemism. Anyway, he played a number of songs, where most of the crowd joined in, including the obligatory Zorba the Greek.
Will and I were working behind the bar most of the evening, although I also helped in the kitchen and with serving. Milhac has a few small group of hardcore drinkers, one of which was in attendance that evening. They are mainly harmless, even with a few too many drinks under their belt. There were two of them left around 1am, and Sophie ended up cutting them off, mainly so we could leave. Since the choices for the night were wine, whiskey and pastis, we brought our own vodka and mixers, so were both feeling pretty good by the end of the night.
Everyone really enjoyed themselves and were most complimentary about both the food, and the DJ. We’ll definitely be using him again in the future. We cleaned up a bit, and then got home around 1:30. We stayed up another couple hours watching a film, so it was a fairly late night. I woke up just in time to head back down to clean-up at 11. It didn’t take too long, and I brought home some leftovers that he had for lunch and dinner. We’ve got one more event next month, but it doesn’t require any planning. I’m happy the year is coming to a close, although it looks like I’m stuck being president again next year.