Cooking frenzy

The wind howled, the rain beat at the windows and trees toppled over around us, but inside our house it was a blissful scene of warm, cosy domesticity, with my brother Matty and his girlfriend Kate joining us for the long weekend.
As consummate dumpster-divers, Matty and Kate arrived bearing bag-loads of food salvaged from supermarket dumpsters in Canberra, which all needed to be cooked and consumed as Matty was going overseas and had to clean out his fridge. So Kate rolled up sleeves and dived in to chop up masses of butternut pumpkin, while Phil prepared pizzas, and Matty and I stood around looking beautiful (it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it).
The hideous weather (which unfortunately claimed nine lives in NSW) meant we were largely confined indoors for most of the weekend so occupied ourselves with eating, talking, reading and even working. Very relaxing it was, although I'd like to brag that I single-handedly cleared our road of a large fallen tree, armed only with a hacksaw and plenty of pride.