Gourmet Wednesday and family night.

Wednesday the 18th March was a celebration of family and friends. A long acquaintance and friend  of mine since the early 1980's has left work at NETS to go into semi retirement. NETS has lost a great consultant, who not only took the time to triage emergency cases as well as being a very important member of our NETs family. So.. a great way to celebrate Tom leaving, was to have  a get together  with many  NETS friends from past and present, and join my family on gourmet Wednesday. There was 15 in total.  Two was sorely missed, one my wonderful daughter in law Cara who flew out that morning to philadelphia to present, at a conference, her thesis (as part of her PHD),on preschool bullying and Arieta our NETS CMO, who has been at NETS as long as me. Girls you were with us in spirit.

A great evening was had by all.

 Two days of planning and prep work went into a very successful evening.

Entree :Zuppa Di Pesce 

I made my own fish stock for this dish, well worth the effort, an amazing dish.

A very successful entree, enjoyed by most, minus one allergic to shellfish... Tom!

Main consisted of an assortment of salads, exotic mango salad, roasted vegetable salad, coleslaw and Greek salad, baked barramundi, snags, rissoles and eye fillet steak and marinated chicken wings.

Dessert

Iced Vo Vo slice, white chocolate rose water mousse, Portuguese tarts, hazelnut chocolate cup cakes, chocolate and coffee syrup  pancotta, made by my dear friend Sandy, most ended up on the floor, accidentally  dropped out of a very packed fridge, but what was left was delicious.

 

Hazelnut flourless chocolate cakes, delicious, well done Nicola.

I also made Sangria, I am not sure who enjoyed it the most, me.....or Janet.

Our outdoor dining area and table, set ready for guests.

All set.

Enjoying the food and company.

Our intimate gathering

Farewell Tom you will be missed at NETs.

Thank you also to my two wonderful sons, Alex for cooking the BBQ and Nigel for putting his butcher skills into practice and also my long suffering DH who did a wonderful job of entertaining and all the washing up.

What have I been up to lately in quilting land...

Attempting to get my last 12 months worth of quilts completed.

This is my version of MSG! Anne Levens quilt, 1640 hexagons, now for the borders,

Borders nearly completed, measures 113 inches, this is a big one, only one side to go. When did I say that I was going to make normal sized quilts, must have been after this quilt.!

Love this fabric so made a skirt, just love the flamingos.

My skirt.

My noodle box, http://chrisquilts.blogspot.com/borders to be added, then off to the quilter. 

Now for the scalloped border.

That's it for now, less than a month till we fly off to France for Pour L'Amour Du Fil in Nantes.

Night duty and not existing.

Been quite for awhile and not blogging, very busy on nights, helping to save lives. Funny how a day in the life of a NETS nurse can be steady, but when the dark of night  appears the emergency calls seem to come in thick and fast. At least I do derive some comfort in the knowledge that the babies and children of NSW have got the most dedicated medical and nursing teams sent to retrieve them. Our medical teams provides intensive care with specially built medical equipment that can be transported by road and air. The NETS teams are sent to smaller regional and rural hospitals that do not have  specialist care within their hospital. Winter is the time for viral and flu like  illness which makes our small cargo very vulnerable and on a lot of occasions, need respiratory support.  The downside of retrievals in winter is the extreme weather conditions such as fog, icing and turbulent winds. The combination of these adverse weather conditions can make the distances that we travel very difficult and often teams have to travel long distances by road, which incurs quite a lot of overtime, it may also take many hours to stabilise our patients and that in combination with  hours of travelling  are exposed to fatigue. What is admirable Is that no matter  how tired the teams are they just soldier and obtain the goal of stabilising and transporting sick children to a large tertiary hospital that can provide intensive care,  nurse them back to health and return them home.

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Photo shot of  NETS and Child flight, this photo was taken in 2007.
Many changes have occurred since, Child flight is no longer operational since December 2012 and now our dedicated helicopter is. Care flight. Of course many of the nursing and medical staff have left and new staff have joined. I no longer do retrievals, but now work in the clinical coordination centre of NETS.