Weekend in the country

Friday night: Anna’s minestrone ∼ Alice’s garlic bread

Saturday breakfast: Baked butterbeans with fried eggs and/or Baked apple porridge

Saturday lunch: Chops and sausages with Pearl barley, beetroot and yoghurt salad

Saturday dinner: Braised fennel and tomato ∼ Light and crunchy winter salad ∼ Rich lasagne with winter greens ∼ Ginger and pear pudding with Salted caramel sauce and ice cream

Sunday breakfast: Fluffy pancakes with Poached quinces and Sweet dukkah

Winter weekends away with friends or at home with a houseful of visitors are my favourite. And here’s why: most of our catch-ups these days seem to be on borrowed time – a quick coffee with a friend before work, half an hour for lunch to swap news and stories in rapid fire or, if we’re lucky, a long lunch or dinner over the weekend. So the chance to spend a whole weekend with your favourite people is extra special. As are the good chats to be had while washing up, out for a Saturday morning walk, over a card game or during a car trip. So please, once a year if you can, beg, borrow, steal or rent a house with a group of buddies, get them all to commit to a weekend in winter and lock it in. A week out, delegate a meal per person. People are always happy to contribute if there’s a team leader who’s happy to delegate and make sure that not everyone brings lasagne.

My second suggestion for a great weekend away is to get some games happening. My friends think I’m a total games tragic – I walk into a room of people relaxing by the fire and instantly feel the need to organise them into some kind of activity. Charades, gin rummy, Scrabble, celebrity head; it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as there’s a competition underway. And while they tease me for not letting them be, it’s pretty clear once the charades start, and the laughter and noise wakes up the kids, that everyone secretly loves it.

And a third tip for good weekends away: organise an outdoor activity for Saturday afternoon – a bonfire, bushwalk, game of cricket, hide and seek, whatever. Better yet, take your lunch out for a picnic. There’s nothing better than coming in, all red-faced, happily exerted and hungry from the cool fresh air, to stoke the fire, pour the red wine and heat up your lasagne.

The menu

Most of the dishes on my menu can be made before the weekend and brought along to be worked into a meal. For example, with the lasagne, someone can make the ragu during the week and bring it along with lasagne sheets and the white sauce ingredients so it’s more of an assembly job on the day. The minestrone, garlic bread, pudding and quinces can all be made before the weekend and then just heated, baked and gussied up a bit before serving.