More chicks to add to our brood...

A very, very quick update but last night, both of our chicks in our second egg hatched! This time we were trying to hatch white Orpingtons and the eggs we had named 'Steve' and 'Nugget' hatched.

Jeff saw a tiny crack in the Steve egg on Friday morning and by 11:00pm that night, both of them had arrived. It was so much better than the last time, when we had a horrible (and very emotional) time of helping our black Orpington chick (BamBam) out of her egg.

Steve is white, yet nugget is yellow. We left them in the incubator overnight and transferred them to the brooder this morning. Jeff set his camera back up (all hail hatch cam) and now we can watch them all day and watch them cuddling each other and pecking the chick crumbs off the floor. It's lovely, but it does hammer home the fact that BamBam is currently in a box on her own and that's not great as chickens are sociable birds and do best in a flock or at least with 1 other chicken. So, I think we're going to wait a couple of days and let them play together. We're going to keep these chicks for 2.5 weeks and then give them to my work colleague and unlike last time, I haven't got so involved so we won't need to do a mad dash to try and find some similar looking chicks and give those to him, instead.

I'm going round Jeff's house tonight and I really hope we can have a relaxing, enjoyable night with no stresses, no huge shopping trips and no late nights... in fact an early night sounds fantastic :-)

- Molly

Chick Update!

It has been waaay too long since I updated this blog and once again, loads of stuff has happened!

I guess the most important thing is, Jeff and I are still together and things still seem to be very much on track. It’s pretty much 8 months now and I can’t see anything bad just around the corner – especially considering we have 3 holidays planned, the first one being Northumberland in a few weeks! (which I think we are both looking forward to).

Let me take your mind back about 2 months, when I first posted that Jeff and I were going to try and hatch chicks. This actually came to fruition and after purchasing an incubator from Ebay, we also bought some Black Orpington chicken eggs and popped them in. As we had purchased a manual incubator, we had to turn them by hand a minimum of 3 times a day and make sure the water in the middle of the incubator was topped up so it had the correct humidity. After 8 or so days, we candled them (stuck them on a bright torch in a dark room to see what was inside the egg) and found that we only had 2 out of 6 eggs that were fertile.

For 18 days Jeff and I took turns in turning the eggs – if Jeff was at a pub quiz with his mates or working late, I’d go round after work or before work and turn the eggs. I thought we worked quite well together! The last 3 days we didn’t have to turn them and on the Friday, Jeff and I met at the pub and he kept saying he thought he had heard the egg peep. I told him not to be so stupid and he was probably imagining it, but anyway, we headed back to his house and a very long story short, it turns out Jeff was right, we did have one of the eggs hatching!

Our beautiful chick was born after a very emotional and horrible ‘labour’ and over the last two weeks Jeff and I have watched her grow and grow. She started trying to fly after 1 week and after 2 weeks she wanted to perch and jump on your legs etc. It was fascinating watching her grow and I admit right here and right now, I have got very attached.

So here’s the thing. When I started this ‘project’, I had promised my work colleague (who has a lovely garden with lovely chickens) that he could have any of the chicks that hatched. Neither Jeff or myself own our own house and we were worried in regards to the noise the chickens would made as that’s not fair on the neighbours. I was adamant that I wouldn’t get too attached and would be happy to see the chick go to a good and loving home. After a week of her being born, I visited Jeff at his home and burst into tears, admitting that it would be utterly terrible to give our ‘first born’ up, even though we knew she would go to a loving home.

Jeff really excelled himself in how supportive he was – he said we could keep her and I could let my colleague know that we’d just hatch him some more. However, I felt guilty that we had promised my work colleague a black chick and then I’d be letting him down and he’d have to wait a good few weeks for us to hatch some more. Cue ‘The great chicken switch of 2011!’ We searched on the internet to try and find someone who would sell us a black 2 week old, Orpington chick, thinking we could give that chick to my work colleague. Therefore, we get to keep our ‘baby’ and he still gets a chicken!

The only problem was, no one seemed to have chicks exactly that colour and that age. Some people had chocolate Orpington chicks (and we thought about saying ‘Oh! Look! She’s changing colour....’ (That idea lasted all of 10 seconds!) and some people had Black Orpington chicks that were about 8 weeks old, meaning we could say ‘Wow! Look, she’s grown fast....’ I eventually got phoned by a really nice bloke who lived in Wantage and he bred chickens with his son. He said he usually sold the chickens in pairs, but as the chicken would be going to a loving home, he would be willing just to sell one.

When we got there, we saw all kinds of breeds and it was obvious that all the chickens were well looked after. We found the smallest Black Orpington chicken we could and purchased her, drove back home and popped her in a box. I called her ‘Big chicken’ and she and our chick, BamBam got on very well indeed, to the point where BamBam was actually the top chicken! It was lovely seeing BamBam getting on well with Big Chicken and we got to cuddle her for a few days until she went to her new home on Sunday.

Now Jeff and I just have one chick left who is growing LOADS. On Wednesday, we are looking forward to seeing the white Orpington chicks which should hatch in a couple of days! I’m going to try very hard not to get as attached to them as they really should be going to by work colleague....

- Molly

We are parents!

It seems like such a long time ago since I updated this blog (and in fairness, it has been quite a few days!)

Where to start, well, I guess it’s best to start with the biggest news – One of the chicks that Jeff and I incubated hatched! Sadly only 2 out of the 10 we initially incubated were fertile, so last weekend we were hoping for both of the fertile eggs to hatch. On Friday night, I texted Jeff as I was bored and asked him if he wanted to go to a local pub. As he didn’t have anything else to do, he said yes and we met for a drink. The day before, Jeff hadn’t been in the office – he’d been at a local mental health hospital, helping the staff do some gardening (a volunteering thing his work signs up to). As  result of this, he was rather achey and his legs hurt so I suggested that we go back to his and I could give him a massage – one way of repaying the hundreds of hours he has spent massaging me!

After getting back to Jeff’s house and making his legs feel ever so slightly better, Jeff put together all the motion shots that his web cam had taken over the last few days (basically, Jeff bought a web cam and aimed it at the incubator so we didn’t miss anything!) I really didn’t believe that the egg had moved, but low and behold, I saw it with my own eyes. If you’ve ever seen ‘Paranormal Activity’, it was like that – you’re looking at the screen and then –WOAH! But even then, I suggested it was gravity and nothing else. Jeff said he could have sworn that the egg was chirping, but I said that once you want something so bad, you end up convincing yourself you’ve either seen or heard things that aren’t there.

That being said, I then thought I had heard something – but convinced myself that it was probably the birds outside, eating some of the bird seed. However, after looking at the eggs, I saw that one of them had a hole in the bottom, yes, one of our eggs was hatching! I nearly burst into tears and as the egg was hatching at the bottom and not the top, made the STUPID mistake of opening up the incubator and turning the egg around.
Jeff and I stared at the egg for ages – I finally left at 11:00pm, however as soon as I was home, logged straight back into Jeff’s ‘Hatch cam’ to see if any progress was made. I think I got about 3-4 hours sleep that night and at 5:30am on Saturday morning got up, had breakfast and went straight back down to Jeff’s house to see if any progress had been made. Unfortunately, the chick had not made any progress at all and at 08:00, I made the decision that we should help it out of the egg.

This is something that has divided a lot of chicken breeders – some say that you should never help a chick out of the egg and that if it’s not strong enough to break out on its own, then it will not be strong enough to survive. They also say that the chick has to break out on its own, as it helps it reach full maturity. On the other hand, some people say that helping chicks can save their life and they can go on to grow into strong, healthy chickens and have a normal life. I regretted opening the incubator as it meant that the humidity went down and therefore toughen the outer membrane of the egg, meaning it was too tough for the poor chick to break through – therefore, if we didn’t help, it would die and it would be my fault.

I got a cocktail stick (which was recommended) and started pulling bits of the shell away. This went on for the next 12 hours. I’d pull some of the shell and membrane away, then wait. The worry was that if the chick was still attached to the inner membrane, I could damage it and therefore the chick could bleed to death.

It got to about 4:00pm and whilst watching TV we heard a ‘crack’, the chick had managed to get both it’s legs out of the shell and was trying to talk. Unfortunately it still had a lot of the shell attached to it and it couldn’t get free of it, due to the low humidity. Jeff made me wait until after we had had some food to try again and with a massive cut of some nail scissors, the chick was free! I burst into tears and promptly put the lid back onto the incubator and left the chick in there overnight.

She is absolutely amazing – not that we know it’s a she, yet! Within an hour, she was walking inside the incubator and chirping and by the next morning, she was fully fluffy, very mobile and very vocal! We moved her into her brooder and after 30 minutes of her chirping quite loudly as she was worried about her new surroundings, she settled in incredibly well.

Unfortunately the other egg didn’t hatch and as we didn’t want her to be lonely, we got her a Teddy bear to cuddle into and also put some big shiny marbles in her box, as well as some crumpled up paper to play with. Within an hour she was pecking chick crumbs off the floor and within a few hours she was drinking and also pooping! I think both Jeff and I were quite amazed at how perfect and cute she was.

Her name is ‘BamBam’, after one of my work colleagues and we have her for 2 weeks, until she goes to my work colleague’s house as he has chickens and she’ll be able to live on his farm, with other Orpingtons. She’s a black Orpington, hence why she’s not the normal ‘yellow’ colour and my friend has Buff Orpingtons so he’ll be able to tell which one she is VERY easily.

For the last 2 days, Jeff, myself and a lot of friends have been logging into ‘Chick Cam’ constantly to see if she is OK. I went round to Jeff’s house yesterday to check on her and couldn’t believe how much she had grown in 24 hours. I picked her up for a bit of a cuddle and she didn’t seem to mind at all, in some ways, she actually likes company as when Jeff and I left the room, she chirped quite loudly for a while as if to say ‘Oi! You! Don’t leave me’  - I think for this reason, Jeff and I are going to get her some more toys and a mirror so that she thinks there are other chicks around.

It was one of the most emotional things I think I have ever been through and poor Jeff had to put up with me continually worried and crying on Saturday. The next set of eggs are in the automatic incubator and are due to hatch in two weeks. However, unlik the manual one, we don’t have to touch it at all, apart from to top up the water every few days and therefore when the chicks are due to hatch, we are just going to let nature take its course and NOT open the incubator. I said to Jeff, I don’t think I’ll be as attached to the next lot of chicks as I didn’t have to turn the eggs for 18 days, nor help them out of their eggs. I know we were always going to have to give the chicks up (both Jeff and I live in rented houses and it’s not fair on the neighbours to keep chickens, nor fair on the chickens to keep them in such a small space) but it’s really going to upset me when we have to give BamBam up.

Apart from hatching chicks, Jeff and I have continued our healthy eating – Jeff is following the ‘no carbs’ diet and I’m doing the low GI / Low carbs / Low fat diet, which means that mine is slightly less restrictive in some ways, but more restrictive in others – Jeff can have all meat, whereas I can’t really have fatty meats such as sausages. I can have vegetables, whereas Jeff can’t – yet Jeff can have as much cheese or egg as he wants – I can’t. Regardless of what we’re doing, it seems to be working as both Jeff and I have lost weight. We’ve still got a way to go (well, I think Jeff is gorgeous as he is, but I know I’ve got some more to lose… currently a size 14, want to be a size 10!) so we’re going to see how long we can keep it up and just be sensible on what we eat.

That being said, I’m still making lots of lovely cakes and things to eat for my work colleagues, recently I’ve made a wonderful ‘red velvet cake’ topped with yummy vanilla icing, I’ve also made some really gorgeous peanut butter brownies. We had half of one each but could easily have eaten the whole lot! I took them all into work and my work colleagues devoured them really quickly. I guess that’s one of the bad things about being on a healthy eating plan – you can’t really eat the things you bake! Yet, stopping baking and cooking for months would make me quite unhappy as I really like to cook!

Another piece of news – Jeff and I have booked Iceland! We’re already going to Cologne in December for the German Christmas markets, however yesterday we put a deposit on a holiday to Iceland in the New Year. I’m really excited as I’ve always wanted to go and see the Northern lights and considering a year ago, I didn’t think I would ever see Jeff again, it’s lovely to think that we’re back together and can experience these things as a couple. ALSO… we’re going back to Northumberland in August so that Jeff can see his family and so I can enjoy the scenery and have a few days off work.

I love Northumberland and whilst I am Southern, I really do think that the North has a few things that the South doesn’t – the people in particular seem so much more friendly! Jeff and I already have an idea of what 3 course meal we will cook for his parents (it seems to have become a ‘thing’ – Jeff and I cook for his parents) but I think we’ll have to practice a few times before we go up as one of the courses is Scotch eggs and we’ve not made them yet.

I’m seeing Jeff tomorrow and cooking for him. I thin I’ll probably spend a good deal of the evening staring at BamBam and cuddling her (may as well make the most of it!). I think we’re also planning on going for a walk along the canal on Friday night. We went for a walk along the same canal on Sunday afternoon as I wanted to get out the house and clear my head (as it was so emotional!) and it was lovely. Apparently you can walk for over 33 miles, however we only managed about 1.5 before we turned round and went back. If it’s raining, I am sure we’ll find something else to do, equally as enjoyable :-)

-Molly

Sad news about the eggs

The healthy eating is back on with a vengeance! That’s certainly true… Jeff and I have been healthy eating for a week now – no crisps, chocolate and no bread, rice or pasta. I weighed myself this morning and it’s certainly working, so I’m hoping another couple of weeks and all my pairs of trousers will fit again :-)

So, what have we been up to this week? Well… It’s been an up and down week, that’s for sure.  I first saw Jeff on the Wednesday and the weather was gorgeous – We had already decided what we were going to eat ‘Almond flaked cod’, which was one of the recipes in one of my BBC Good Food recipe books ‘101 fish and seafood dishes’. We thought we had all the necessary ingredients, however we forgot the fish stock so had to go out and get some.

Cooking took very little time and before long, we had dinner! In all honesty, I don’t think we would make it again as although it was ‘OK’, it wasn’t anything special and Jeff and I thought that the sauce was a little bit overpowering.

After dinner we turned the eggs and candled them – this proved quite emotional as it turns out, 5 out of 10 of them are infertile! I got quite upset at this, especially considering Jeff and I have been turning ‘the Oeuffs’ religiously 3 times a day for the last 12 days! It was quite nerve wracking when wee (Jeff) cracked the first one into a bowl, outside (we did it outside in case the egg was bad and smelt horrible) and we were met with – absolutely nothing! A completely normal egg with absolutely no bloody chick inside! We candled the others and the same thing happened.

So currently we only have 5 eggs in our incubator – We don’t think 3 of them have chicks inside, but we have seen veins and beating hearts in two of them, so we are keeping our fingers crossed for next weekend and hoping that at least 2 of the eggs will hatch. As it’s such a ‘poor show’, Jeff and I are actually going to get another incubator on Sunday night and I’ve already ordered some more eggs so we can have 2 incubators on the go at once! Currently we have black Orpington eggs being incubated, we’re going to add white Orpington eggs to it!

I also saw Jeff on Thursday night this week and whilst I was making home made beef burgers (with mince I had found in his freezer - I made loads of different types, cheese, mixed herbs etc) Jeff surprised me with flowers! It was really sweet of him and completely unexpected. I can't believe we have been 'seeing' each other for over 7 months now... it really does feel very different to last time round.

Unfortunately we’re not seeing each other until Sunday night as I’m seeing my crazy Uncle and Aunt ‘Oooop North’, however as soon as I get to Jeff’s we’re going to head off, pick up the other incubator and start the hatching process all over again :-)

- Molly

Ludivico Einaudi, red velvet cake and amazing weather

Jeff and I have had a really amazing weekend – so much to tell! I suggest if you haven’t already, you make sure you’re sitting down, you’ve gone to the toilet and you’ve got some kind of sustenance, as this could take a while…

Unlike ‘normal’, I didn’t actually see Jeff until Saturday afternoon as I wanted some time with my cat (who I only picked up from the cattery on Wednesday) and also needed to sort a few things out at home. I had told Jeff I’d be over about 4:00pm, so we could travel into town and then take the train to London to see Ludivico Einaudi, but I actually managed to get things done a bit earlier than I had planned, so I arrived at Jeff’s at 12:30pm. He did say he might be out, fixing his air-con, so I gave him a ring, only to find him at his front door – he had gone out and brought me milk for tea, which was really sweet of him.

As we had a few hours to kill until we needed to go to London, I suggested to Jeff that we go to a Farm shop that we hadn’t gone to before – one called ‘Casey Fields’, out by Ashampstead near Reading (http://www.vicarsgame.co.uk/index.htm ) I didn’t know about it until I had read last month’s ‘Olive’ magazine and as we both like exploring and visiting Farm shops, we thought it was a no brainer. It didn’t take too long to get there and the Sat-Nav took us straight there. We didn’t know what to expect so didn’t have any expectations. When we got there, we were pleasantly surprised. OK, so it wasn’t the biggest Farm shop we had ever been to, nor did it have a lot of condiments – however it had the biggest array of meat and exotic meat we had seen – Some really nice sausages, venison, ostrich and even kangaroo in the freezer!

As both Jeff and I are back onto our healthy eating plan, we bought some pork, a selection of sausages and some ostrich ‘Biltong’, which we munched on the way back to Jeff’s house. We made a slight detour on the way back and Jeff went into a hardware shop to get a new bulb for his torch – we were hoping to candle the eggs later as they were day 7 by this point and we wanted to see if there were any babies inside.

We got back, popped the meat away and Jeff cooked random things so we could have something to eat before we went to London (rather than grabbing fast food). I drove us into town in my car and parked in my company car park (which is always very handy for parking at weekends) we then got the train into London and finally managed to make our way to the Barbican centre which unfortunately took a lot longer than we had hoped for, due to engineering works – there wasn’t a single underground train going to the Barbican, which we found bloody stupid. Ludivico wasn’t due to start his concert until 7:30pm so we sat outside for a little while as the weather was so gorgeous and did some people watching.

The concert itself was… interesting. We both love Ludivico Einaudi and think he is an incredibly talented pianist – I, myself have seen him live 4 times. This concert was called ‘Trente’ and it was different to the normal ones as there wasn’t loads of him playing the piano – he was conducting a lot of the time and a lot of the time it seemed like his orchestra (comprised of very talented people playing very strange and unusual instruments) was playing or people were singing – there was even dancing! It was certainly worth going to see, however I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t inline with his ‘usual’ concerts e.g. just him, playing stunning piano music.

After the concert we walked back to Moorgate tube station and managed to get a train back home. We were both very, very tired and would have taken a taxi back, however neither of us had enough money, so I walked back to pick up my car and drove back to pick Jeff up (he’s not allowed into my company car park as it’s all pass-controlled). When we got back, we had a snack of meat and eggs (no carbs!) and candled the eggs – for the first few, we didn’t really know what we were looking for and if I’m honest, I don’t know how many will hatch. However, the last two had moving chick embryo’s in them! I was rather excited and it was lovely to think that all our egg turning hasn’t been in vain :-)

We got to bed about 1:30am which is rather late for me – You think I’d have slept in this morning but nope, I was up and about by 8:30am, pestering Jeff to get up so we could do stuff! After getting up, we turned the eggs and Jeff helped me make my red velvet cake – I bought the cake mix when we went to the BBC Good Food show last weekend from a stand that sold American imported things. It was very, very red and the funny thing was that one of the E numbers had a warning about having an adverse affect on children!

Whilst waiting for the cake to bake in the oven, we did some more research on keeping and hatching quails – once we have given the chicks that (hopefully) hatch to my work colleague, Jeff and I have been thinking about hatching quails but unlike the chicks, keeping them and letting them live in a pen, in Jeff’s garden. After looking at all the different ‘common’ quail breeds. Jeff and I decided that we will look into hatching ‘Californian Quails’ which look really cute and have this funny feather on their heads.

Once the cake was finished, I left it to cool and Jeff and I went to the supermarket to get food for lunch – today has been really sunny (and very hot!) so we decided on doing a BBQ, however unlike before, we didn’t go to a Farmers market and didn’t have any bread or ‘fatty’ stuff. It didn’t take long to get what we needed and after we got back, Jeff and I watched a couple of ‘Back to Basic’s with Ina Garten as we’re still massive fans (myself more than Jeff) and set to work on the BBQ. Jeff decided that due to the heat, he was going to take out his garden umbrella to pop in the middle of the table, however when opening it – he saw that something had chewed a lovely round hole in one of the panels!

The BBQ was absolutely lovely and very healthy – we had chicken in a Nando’s BBQ rub, we had turkey and we also had some salmon which we marinated in Jeff’s triple garlic and teriyaki sauce that he bought at the BBC Good Food show. All in all, it was absolutely gorgeous!

As it was such a lovely day, Jeff suggested we visit a nearby town and have a wander around – we did, and we managed to not only find a brooder for our chicks, but also some more bird seed, which is great as we were really running out. All in all, a fantastic and varied weekend. Unfortunately it came to an end far too quickly and I headed off home after saying goodbye to Jeff. Unfortunately we aren’t spending much time together next weekend as I’m seeing various relatives – I guess this means Jeff can breathe a sigh of relief and do stuff a little less vigorous!

- Molly

Lemoncello and sponge

This is just a quick update from me today as Jeff and I had a comparatively quiet night last night. Poor Jeff has been working really hard recently and has had to travel up to London for client meetings (something he hates, as he hates London). I had hoped to meet him at his house after work yesterday, but unfortunately his meetings overran so he wasn’t home until 6:30pm.

We went shopping, got a nice, yet slightly boring dinner of pasta, pesto, bacon, crème freche and cheese and just chilled. We also turned the eggs (I can’t believe it’s currently day 5!) and marked it off on our egg chart.

The most interesting thing we did yesterday was eat pudding – this was a birthday present from one of my friends, however as I hadn’t managed to see her until a couple of weeks ago, she gave it to me then, despite my birthday being in January. Basically, it was sponge pieces in Lemoncello – the Italian lemon vodka / liquor. She told me that the shop keeper had told her that it was nice with double cream, so at the weekend Jeff and I had bought some double cream in the farm shop, however hadn’t got round to eating it before last night.

They were ... interesting. You could really taste the alcohol and to be honest, I thought it was rather overpowering. Jeff seemed to like them though and had the ones I couldn’t finish. Would we have it again? Probably not, but it was different and it’s always good to try different things. One thing to mention – our sausage rolls went down really well with our respective work colleagues – both sets were demolished before lunch time which I guess is a testament to what good cooks we are :-)

This Saturday Jeff and I are off to London for a classical concert and I think we’re both looking forward to it immensely. It does seem like things are getting a little bit too busy for my liking – insomuch as, I’m not able to just relax and chill, I’m always doing stuff – I guess I only have myself to blame! One nice thing is that Jeff and I have a weekend together in 2 weeks time – that’s the weekend the chicks should hatch! We’re not going to do very much as we have to be near Jeff’s house so I think we’ll use it to cook, bake and generally enjoy each others company.

I can’t believe we’re going to be chicken parents in less than 3 weeks!

- Molly

BBC Good Food show

Jeff and I had an amazing weekend – we did so much stuff and it was such good fun. If you’ve never been to the BBC Good Food show in Birmingham NEC, then go, go! (I can say that as I’ve already got our tickets to the winter show, so I don’t mind :-) )

I arrived at Jeff’s house on Friday night and the weather was dire – rain, rain and more rain! Unfortunately this limited what we could get up to, however we seemed to manage OK. Firstly – the strawberry! We have successfully managed to grow our own food again, this time, the strawberry plants seem to have gone mad and a lot of strawberries have appeared. I spotted the first ripe one on Friday so picked it – it was really nice (although I guess we were biased!) Sadly we won’t have enough this year to cook with them, but as they’re all producing baby plants already, we’re hoping that next year we’ll have loads more plants and therefore, loads more strawberries.

As we’re hatching eggs (or trying to) I had ordered an incubator over a week ago. On Friday it still hadn’t turned up and after contacting the Ebay seller, who said she had posted it First Class on Monday, it looked like the parcel was lost in the post. I wouldn’t have normally minded, however we already had the 6 black Orpington Eggs and the 6 Belgian d’uccle eggs and if we didn’t start incubating them soon – they wouldn’t hatch. Therefore I asked the Ebay seller if Jeff and I could perhaps, drive round her house (she only lives in Andover, so not too far away from us) and buy one from her. She was very obliging and thankfully she had another incubator. So Friday night saw Jeff and myself driving over to Andover to pick up an incubator. We got back and turned it on straight away, as apparently it’s a good idea to get the incubator up to a constant temperature before putting the eggs in.

Saturday morning saw us getting up at 6:00am and putting the eggs into the incubator – thankfully the incubator worked fine and was at exactly 37.5 degrees – perfect temperature! We set off by 7:00am as it was just over 2 hours to get up to Birmingham – I felt so tired so we did stop off half way and get a cheeky Starbucks.

We managed to get to the Birmingham NEC for 9:00am and it was already quite busy. When we got inside I think both of us were really impressed – there were loads and loads of stands – food, wine, cookery implements – it was amazing! We also got to wander round ‘Gardeners world live’ which was quite funky. There were some really nice jewellery stands, however I was actually quite good and resisted buying anything! Another quite cool thing, was that there were loads and loads of free samples of things – free Carte Dor icecream, free Crabbie’s Ginger Beer , free cheese – parmesan cheese no-less and we sampled ones that had been matured for 18, 22 and 24 months (the difference was quite impressive!).

Jeff and I were like kids in a Sweetshop, however, unlike kids – we had our debit cards, which were used quite heavily. We bought chocolate wine, hazelnut liquor (absolutely gorgeous) Elderflower Cider…. Just loads and loads of really cool things. I even got a knife Sharpener, something that I have wanted for ages. We didn’t watch any of the live MasterChef presentations as we were too busy wandering around the stalls, however I think next time, we might try and find a seat.

Unfortunately but expectedly, it started getting busier and busier which meant that it was harder to wander round and also harder to view what was on offer on certain stands. Also, the more we bought, the more things we had to carry and after 3 hours, both Jeff and I were carrying about 6-7 bags each, our hands were hurting quite a lot!

We left by 12:30pm, pretty knackered – we could have probably spent another 30 minutes to an hour in there, but not carrying that amount of purchases so I think when we go in November, we’ll be taking a rucksack and also probably taking advantage of the NEC’s ‘Shop and Drop’ as they only charge £1 to look after certain things…

We had actually booked a Premier Inn to stay in as we thought the drive would be too much, but we actually drove back to Jeff’s house the same day and arrived back home by 15:30 – that even included a quick trip to a local farm shop to get some food for Saturday night.

Once back at Jeff’s, we chilled, watched a lot of episodes of ‘Come dine with me’ and drank the cider that we had bought a few hours earlier. It was rather yummy. We also purveyed our purchases – we did buy quite a lot of cool things!

Dinner on Saturday night was steak – marinated in the BBQ sauce we had purchased at the BBC Good Food show. It was accompanied by Cajun sweet potato chips and honey roasted carrots and broccoli. For pudding, it was a summer fruits pie – also bought at the show and that was very yummy too. Even though Jeff was knackered, he rubbed my shoulders which I really appreciated as they were hurting quite a lot from carrying all the bags.

Sunday morning and I actually managed a lie in! Well, I say ‘Lie in’ – it was after 08:00am which is quite impressive for me. Jeff and I got up, we turned the eggs and had a cup of tea whilst we decided what to do. We had dismissed the idea of going to a Farmers market as we had gone to the BBC Good Food show the day before, however Jeff didn’t mind driving to SouthSea and the weather wasn’t overly great so we couldn’t really go out to a National Trust property so we decided we’d go. However, before we did, we made loads and loads of sausage rolls from a recipe in my July 2011 BBC Good Food Magazine. It was a weird recipe as contained lentils and nutmeg, however after we’d cooked them and tried one, they did turn out to be quite yummy. Jeff and I are going to take some into work for our colleagues and I am planning on giving some to my Father as I am seeing my parents on Tuesday.

Once we had made all the sausage rolls, we got in the car and headed down the Motorway to the Farmers market. We were very glad we did, as Southsea actually had a food festival on! It was very similar in some ways to the show in Birmingham. Jeff and I ate quite a lot of interesting things and Jeff managed to buy some more yummy tomato bread which he said he’d eat tonight. We spent an hour wandering around, looking at all the stalls and sampling some of the interesting things they had on offer before heading back home.

I headed off shortly afterwards as I was feeling a bit crap and didn’t want to take it out on Jeff like I felt I had been doing for the last few weeks – I’ve got a presentation tomorrow at work which I’m really nervous of, and whilst Jeff is supportive, I didn’t really want him to say in his usual way ‘You’ll be fine’, as even though I won’t die or get sacked etc, I’m totally bricking it and it doesn’t help to be told that at the moment!

We’re seeing each other on Wednesday and I’m hoping we can have a lovely, relaxing and nice evening.

- Molly

Jeff and I are going to be parents....

I’ve been a bit remiss in updating our Blog – Jeff and I did actually spend Wednesday night together, however this only stretched to a couple of hours as I had a very busy day on Thursday and had to get back home to sort things out.

Surprisingly, after I got to Jeff’s I couldn’t really do much cleaning as Jeff had got wise to what I was doing and already did the washing – curses! I was foiled! So, after feeding the birds (they really are little, greedy things) I watched ‘Bums, boobs and botox’ on Jeff’s Sky Plus box and waited until he got back home. Poor Jeff is having to put up with me still being stressy at the moment and after keeping a blog – I realise that I’m not the easiest person to be with! This time, I was stressed over the fact that our incubator hadn’t turned up yet.

Jeff and I are going to hatch chickens and I have started another blog about it:

http://mollyandjeff-hatchingchicks.blogspot.com/

We’ve already got both sets of eggs and I had purchased the incubator from Ebay last week. The delivery time said 4-5 days and today was the 5th day. After contacting the seller on Ebay, they replied very quickly and said they had posted it first class on Monday so it should have certainly been here today – I have a feeling it’s got lost in the post….

Anyway, Jeff was trying to tell me that it was only Wednesday and that it would turn up soon enough. I, on the other hand, was worried that if it didn’t turn up by Friday (i.e. today) that we wouldn’t be able to start hatching our eggs on Sunday and they’d be useless. Once again, it’s obvious that Jeff is the laid back one in our relationship and I’m the worrier!

After Jeff had tried to calm me down, we went out to B&Q to try and find a thermometer – Why? Because apparently our eggs should be kept at about 12 degrees and if we kept them in Jeff’s main house, they would be too warm and if we kept them outside, they’d be too cold. So, we decided to keep them in Jeff’s garage and I wanted to know what the temperature was. Thankfully, we managed to find a thermometer very quickly and after we’d bought it, we picked up Waggamama’s takeaway (I know, I know – not the most healthy of things in the world, but at least it wasn’t curry!) and went back to Jeff’s house to eat dinner and chat.

Once dinner was finished (and very nice it was, too!) we put our future children in Jeff’s garage, tilted 45 degrees on some blocks of wood. In the last couple of days, Jeff has been really good and has been changing the tilt twice a day – I guess that’s the kind of thing you look for in a partner you may want to have children with one day… Can they cope with kids on their own and will they be a supportive partner? Well, looks like Jeff is able to cope with the eggs on his own!

Tomorrow we’re off to the BBC Good Food show..

- Molly

Our new pet!

Firstly - Jeff and I have started a new blog

http://mollyandjeff-hatchingchicks.blogspot.com/

Yes, we're hatching chickens! (well, trying to) and we're hoping to start this Sunday - I was hoping my incubator would have arrived today, but sadly there was no missed delivery notice by the Postman when I got home. Bummer! As the eggs should arrive tomorrow, I'm really hoping that the incubator also arrives tomorrow....

However, look what Jeff found tonight when he went into his shed to feed the birds! a tiny little mouse! Jeff had tried to plug up all the holes in his shed as he's had holes in the bird seed bag before, so assumed something had been trying to get to the seed - looks like he found the culprit! I haven't seen Jeff today, so haven't seen the mouse firsthand, but it does look rather cute :-)

We're seeing each other tomorrow night - sadly I'm not staying the night as I have to take my cat to the cattery on Thursday morning as we're off to the BBC Good Food show at the weekend and I want to make sure he's looked after properly.... still, I'm sure Jeff and I will spend a nice few hours together :-)

- Molly

Carrot cake and rain

Well, another weekend is over and done with and unfortunately both myself and Jeff are back at work for another fun filled week! (Well, I say ‘week’, I’m actually on holiday on Friday as I’m getting my tattoo on Thursday night so having Friday off to recover, can’t wait, not nervous at all... yet!).

As I was at a friends wedding blessing on Saturday, I wasn’t able to see Jeff until Sunday afternoon. However, we had already decided what we were going to do, so after we had said hello and I had fed the birdies (as Jeff hadn’t had time and they were totally out of bird seed) we decided we would make a carrot cake so that I could take it to work the next day for my colleagues.

Once again, we decided to turn to the BBC Good food recipe archive (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3229/yummy-scrummy-carrot-cake) and the recipe didn’t disappoint us as it turned out really well indeed! I’ve never had carrot cake before as I assumed (wrongly) that it would taste of carrot. I am probably weird, however I don’t mind cooked carrot, but am not keen on raw carrot so the idea of raw carrot in a cake has never appealed to me. However, as we had a little bit of mixture left over, I made 3 small muffins and Jeff and I shared them, rather than cutting into the big cake and spoiling it. It didn’t take long to do and it smelt rather nice. Even the icing was nice and that took about 30 seconds to apply. Once it was cool, I stuck it into a box and took it into work on the Monday – it was very well received!

Once Jeff and I had finished making the cake, we started watching some TV. Unfortunately most of the Ina Garten episodes that Jeff had recorded on his Sky Plus box – we had already seen, so we didn’t really have any more Barefoot Contessa to watch which was a bit of a pain. We did watch an episode of ‘Monsters inside me’ which contained an interesting ‘brain eating amoeba’, however as we got to the end of that, I got really restless – it was horrendous weather outside, it was 7:00pm and sitting in front of the television for ages seemed really pointless.

Even though I had bought food for Jeff and I, I suggested we go out to eat as 1) it would give us something to do and 2) I just couldn’t be bothered to cook. I did feel quite guilty as this is hardly ‘healthy eating’ which as I have started before, Jeff and I are keen to continue – however I think we’re going to eat the food I brought yesterday, on Wednesday so at least it won’t go to waste. I suggested we went to this amazing Nepalese restaurant called ‘Ghurkha Square’ which is in fleet (http://www.gurkhasquare.com/) We have been before – about 2.5 years ago and I remember it being really, really nice. Jeff drove us there and it didn’t take very long at all, which was good.

The food and the service were absolutely brilliant – we loved it. We had a really nice starter, Jeff had a beer and I had a really massive glass of wine which got me rather tipsy. Even though there weren’t many people in the restaurant (it was a rainy, Sunday night I guess) the staff didn’t ‘hang around’ and make you feel self conscious and the service was just brilliant. Jeff said he hadn’t been there since we went last time and I said the same – it felt a bit weird remembering where we last sat, considering we hadn’t been there for so long, but it was nice in a way. We did enter the ‘How would you propose’ territory, which was slightly odd – however Jeff stated (correctly) that if we ever did get engaged, I would want to be the one doing the asking and I agreed – I’ve always thought it seems rather, erm.. ‘pathetic’ for the woman to wait, hint, wait some more, get annoyed as the bloke hasn’t taken the hint, start leaving wedding magazines round the house, hint some more, issue ultimatum etc – if you want to get married, why not just ask the bloke?

We got back just after 9:00pm, very full and very content. It was a very nice Sunday evening. We’re off to the BBC Good Food Show on Saturday and I’m rather excited!

- Molly

7 month itch?

According to my friends, the internet and countless 'Agony Aunts', there are a few 'stages' (for want of a better word) that most couples go through - the first being the '7 month itch', which is apparently when the honeymoon period is over, you stop being on your best behaviour all the time and you both see each other properly - warts and all. Some couples get through it, some, after realising that their partner really wasn't the person they thought they were, split....

As Jeff and I were together for 3.5 years last time, I didn't think we'd go through it - after all, we went through some pretty tough times and stood by each other. After splitting up in October 2009 and not having any contact until November 2010, we've basically been 'together' for the last 7 months and it's been really, really great.

However, the last week has been quite tough going - Jeff is still settling into his job and I've been feeling a bit unloved and unappreciated. This culminated in a midnight text exchange whilst I was on holiday in another country with a friend and followed by a lot of very LONG emails.

Jeff and I don't really text each other, or phone - we're both quite busy people and we've tended to email each other. However, I've found myself waiting longer and longer for Jeff's replies and even though I was able to email Jeff from abroad, send him photographs etc... I didn't hear from him for 2 days.

After our exchange, Jeff apologised - and I realised that he has been going through a lot of stuff at work and that I probably shouldn't be too hard on him, nor too demanding. I suppose it's just setting expectations? If he tells me he's too busy / tired / can't reply for a while, then I'd be OK.... but it was just the not knowing why he wasn't replying to me and it made me feel a bit crap.

Thankfully, I think we managed to sort it out - Jeff even suggested an open air theatre performance in a couple of months which sounds amazing (it's usually me who suggests things as I'm the planner, Jeff's very laid back) and I'm really looking forward to going.

So, I drove round to Jeff's house last night after work - the first time I had seen him since before my holiday. I said I wouldn't turn up until 6:00pm, however managed to get round to his house by 5:20pm, which meant I did some cleaning (much to his annoyance!) before he got there... Jeff had done a Tesco's order a couple of days before and got all the ingredients for the New York Cheesecake that we were going to make (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2869/new-york-cheesecake) and after I'd given him the gifts I bought him whilst on holiday and had a bit of a chat, we set to work making the cheesecake.

Unfortunately it soon became apparent that it wasn't a very quick recipe - bake the base for 10 minutes, then do part of the topping, stick in oven, reduce temperature, blah, blah.. etc.. etc. I admit, I did get a bit annoyed as I really just wanted to 'chill' with Jeff and whilst I usually love baking and cooking with him, it did appear that we were slaves in the kitchen and couldn't really relax whilst we were making the bloody cheesecake!

Added to which, we didn't think we had enough ingredients to make 2 - one for my work colleagues and one for his, so we actually drove to the Supermarket nearby and got more cream cheese and sour cream - turns out, we didn't actually need any more, so poor Jeff has 3 tubs of Philadelphia in the fridge and a lot of sour cream!

We managed to sort most of it out by 9:00pm and after stating that I really didn't want to cook anything for dinner, given that we had been in the kitchen for at least 1.5 hours, we decided to order curry. It wasn't too bad - however it was hardly healthy and considering I'm getting my tattoo next week (yes, that's still going ahead, can't WAIT!) I really don't want the tattooist to be tattooing on a big, fat, wobbly thigh. Plus - I really do want Jeff and myself to continue eating healthily and not go back to our old habits of eating crap.

Jeff opened a bottle of wine and we drank that whilst watching a documentary about the Elephant man - Joseph Merrick. We had recorded it on Jeff's Skyplus box a couple of weeks ago and it was very interesting.

We then made the final part of the cheesecake - the topping, which thankfully didn't take too long, before heading off to bed and cuddling - that was probably the nicest part of the evening as I had really missed Jeff in the last week, especially as we had a bit of a 'discussion' a few days before that.

As I've got a friend's wedding this weekend where I'm taking the wedding photographs, we're next seeing each other on Sunday night and next weekend is the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham which I know we are both really looking forward to. I'm going to try and stop being so stroppy and I'm hoping Jeff will be able to give me a little more reassurance that he's not going to go anywhere......

- Molly

Mac and Cheese and sweet peas

Jeff and I spent Wednesday evening together and it was lovely – unfortunately I didn’t stay the night as I had to drop my cat off in the cattery on Thursday morning, however we made the most of our time together.

I arrived at Jeff’s house before him as I have said before, I leave work earlier than him and only work a few miles away from where he lives. As soon as I got to Jeff’s house I decided to put some washing on for him, do some cleaning etc. Jeff arrived before I was expecting him and he caught me in his downstairs bathroom cleaning the toilet! His opinion is always ‘You don’t need to clean my house’, however I just like to be busy and useful and if he’s at work, it seems wrong to just sit down and watch TV if I could be doing something to make his life easier. Reading that back, I appreciate it makes me sound like a doormat – however I think the reason I like doing it is because Jeff DOESN’T want me to clean – and I’ve always been a rather stubborn person.... :-)

Jeff’s garden is looking really, really wonderful. Everything is growing and it looks gorgeous. Both the sweet pea pots are out in bloom and Jeff’s tomatoes are growing nicely. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been overly great recently so we haven’t been able to sit out in Jeff’s garden, on the patio and appreciate all the plants and flowers, but hopefully as Summer is now ‘officially’ here, we will be able to do it soon. I managed to water everything with Jeff’s empty Volvic bottles, before he arrived home (he doesn’t have a watering can) and filled them all up – so Jeff can water things at the weekend without it taking a long time.

As we had watched loads more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ episodes at the weekend, we had identified another recipe that we wanted to try – ‘Mac and cheese’ (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/mac-and-cheese-recipe2/index.html)  It took me ages to work out what ‘Mac’ was – duh! Macaroni of course! I managed to get all the necessary ingredients, Wednesday lunch time so we didn’t have to nip out to a Supermarket when Jeff got back home. We had a bit of a chat first, Jeff was telling me about his job (he is still enjoying it a LOT more than his old one) and I was telling Jeff all about the technical things I was up to (which is making work a lot more enjoyable than what I was doing before).

Then it came to cooking. I was in charge of the pasta and cheese sauce – Jeff was in charge of grating the cheese in the food processor, cutting up the tomatoes and making the bread crumbs. It didn’t take too long before we had everything sorted and stuck the Mac and cheese in the oven to brown for 30 minutes. Honestly – Ina Garten recipes are brilliant, they’re bloody easy to follow and usually you can get all the ingredients in a normal supermarket. The only thing that’s slightly confusing is – the measurements are all American, so you’re left wondering what a ‘quart’ of milk is (unless you are American, then I guess you know!).

30 minutes went by very quickly and we were left with the most AMAZING macaroni cheese we had ever tasted. I dread to think of the calories though.... Thankfully there was quite a lot left over so Jeff can have some tonight and tomorrow.

Whilst we had a lovely night, it came to an end too quickly and Jeff and I won’t see each other for a week as I’m off on holiday with a work friend. They say ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but I’m not sure if that’s true!

- Molly

Winning Bank Holiday weekend – Part II

After the brilliant, yet knackering Saturday that Jeff and I spent together, Sunday looked like it wouldn’t live up to as much fun. Originally, we were thinking of travelling down to Brighton, mooching around there and investigating the beach. However, the lovely English weather wasn’t particularly nice and rather than drive a couple of hours, just to wear a coat and jumper along the coast, we decided to take a rain check on that idea.

Instead, we had a bit of a lie in and then headed out to the Winchester Farmers market which has become a bit of a regular activity with us. As we reached the car park, we had a bit of good news – free parking! Hurrah! We usually don’t buy that much stuff – just enough to make lunch with, however we actually bought quite a lot this time around! Absolutely brilliant pork sausages, really nice bison burgers, wonderful tomato and watercress bread and two different types of cheeses – a lovely mature cheddar and one with cumin seeds in it. We also bought a couple of different pickles – a sweet onion marmalade and spicy apple chutney, as well as a vine of plum tomatoes. Jeff and I also indulged in a sausage roll and a lamb and rosemary pie (we were going to share each, however I wasn’t keen on the lamb pie, so stuck mostly to the sausage roll!).

It didn’t take us more than about 45 minutes to get everything we needed – as we had already decided that we were going to bake a lot of things, we also bought a dozen eggs and 600 grams of butter. This meant we wouldn’t have to get as much stuff from the supermarket on the way back.

I drove back from Winchester and on the way back we stopped at one of the local garden centres so we could buy another bag of birdseed. Even though it’s the summer, the greedy birds in Jeff’s garden are still eating quite a lot of seed per week and we found ourselves running out again. With the birdseed in the back of the car, we drove to the supermarket to pick up the rest of the ingredients necessary for the chocolate marble cake (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5557/chocolate-marble-cake)  and white chocolate and cranberry biscuits (http://eatlovejump.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/white-chocolate-and-cranberry-biscuits/)  It didn’t take very long (Thank Goodness) to buy everything we needed and with that, we headed back to Jeff’s house via my workplace so that I could pick up my car (As we were at Vinopolis the day before, I drove into town and left my car in the work car park over night – I didn’t want to drive back as we had been drinking).

Once back at Jeff’s house, we started on the cake making straight away – we had decided that we were both going to make a chocolate marble cake for our respective work colleagues. Jeff was in charge of making the white chocolate chips (we had to get normal white chocolate as the supermarket had completely sold out of white chocolate chips) and I was in charge of getting the cake mixture ready. Neither of us had made a marble cake before and to be honest, it wasn’t hard and certainly looked quite effective. I made half the mixture chocolate and Jeff and I took it in turns to dollop it into a cake tin. 45 minutes later and we had a lovely marble cake :-)

We started baking the other cake after the first one had come out of the oven and whilst it was baking, Jeff helped me hoover my car – which is off to the garage tomorrow for a full service. It’s probably just me being weird, however I dislike the idea of taking a dirty car to the garage as I feel that the garage employees will judge me! (I guess it’s as weird as having a cleaner and tidying / cleaning before they arrive!).

The second cake came out really well as well and then we started baking the cookies from an Ottolenghi recipe I have in my cookbook. Jeff helped a little bit, however he was mostly preoccupied trying to get a Playstation 1 emulator installed on his PC as I had mentioned how much I had enjoyed playing ‘Devil Dice’ – which is an old game that I used to play on the PS1 with one of my sisters. Unfortunately, Jeff couldn’t get it to work, despite numerous downloads and fiddling around with things – so, rather than vegetate in front of the TV, we decided to play scrabble! Apparently Jeff played a few board games with his ex last year which made me feel a bit weird – we’ve never really played board games together. However, life goes on and it seemed a bit stupid to not do something just because your partner did it with someone else – plus, I actually won! Jeff isn’t a bad loser and I don’t think I gloated too much.

We then decided to eat, so Jeff fired up the BBQ and we had a really nice meal – the sausages were absolutely gorgeous and combined with the tomato bread, the pickles and chutneys and cheese – we were onto a winner. After stuffing ourselves with lovely food from the Farmers market, we watched some TV in the shape of ‘Lose 30 stone or die’ and ‘Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail’ however about half way through Louis Theroux, I suggested we go to bed as not only was I quite tired, it was really hot in the lounge and both Jeff and I were suffering!

Monday morning arrived and unfortunately I had to go home a few hours ago – however, not before we made pancakes for breakfast. Lovely nutella and cherry ones for me, and sausage and cheese ones for Jeff – Absolutely gorgeous and we were both quite contented and full afterwards.

Unfortunately Jeff and I aren’t going to see each other much for a couple of weeks – I’m off on holiday with a friend next weekend and Jeff is working quite hard at work. We’re seeing each other on Wednesday night and hopefully cooking another Ina Garten’s recipe, but that’s it until next week :-(

- Molly

Winning Bank Holiday weekend – Part I

I had been looking forward to this Bank Holiday weekend for ages. As I like ‘organising’ stuff and as Jeff is one of the most laid back men I’ve ever met, I decided to ‘surprise’ Jeff by organising some cool things to do this weekend and I have to admit to feeling pretty smug as it all came together very nicely indeed and we had a really, really enjoyable few days.

I arrived at Jeff’s house on Friday, after work – I was supposed to be going out with some of my work colleagues, however they had cancelled – therefore I didn’t see Jeff until about 6:30pm as he works later than me. I suggested we get pizza in and just watch some TV, have a chilled night. I’ve never ordered domino’s pizza online and I have to admit to being rather impressed – not only did we manage to find a 25% off voucher online, just by Googling ‘Domino’s Voucher’, however once we had placed the order – Domino’s have this online status thing – 1 to 5, with 5 being ‘order placed’ to 5 being ‘delivered’. Whilst we were watching an episode of ‘Monsters inside me’ on the sofa, both of us kept looking to Jeff’s computer to see if the status of our pizza had been updated – it was really quite cool and it only took about 25-30 minutes to be delivered, not bad considering it was a Friday night!

We were up quite early on Saturday and headed into town. I parked my car in my work car park and Jeff and I headed to the train station, however not before we had a ‘Cheeky Starbucks’ for breakfast – Fruit toast and a cup of tea, yummy! (although Jeff doesn’t share my love of tea, so he opted for a hazelnut hot chocolate instead) The weather wasn’t too bad at all, although I didn’t have a coat (my only coat is about 3 sizes too big for me) and it was a bit cold on the train station platform, whilst waiting for the train. Thankfully the train was on time and we managed to get to Waterloo for 11:00am. We got the underground to London Bridge and knew we would have plenty of time to get to Vinopolis (http://www.vinopolis.co.uk/) , which was our first cool ‘thing’ that we were doing on Saturday. As soon as we got off the tube, we found the most amazing market – Borough Market.

As neither Jeff nor myself come from London or have ever lived in London, we’re not really knowledgeable on London life and what goes on, so whilst I had been to Vinopolis before, I had no idea that there was such a massive market very close by. I think both Jeff and I felt a bit disappointed that we had already had something to eat, as by the looks of things, there were amazing things that we could have had to eat – it was like Winchester Farmers market, but better! All exotic types of mushrooms, amazing breads, wonderful olive oils – We were very good and didn’t buy any of it, but only because we knew we would have to carry all the things that we had purchased around, for the entire day – and we really didn’t want to do that!

After walking round the market for a little while, we made our way to Vinopolis and arrived there about 11:50. I had bought the earliest tickets possible and the earliest tour we could take was 12:00. I chose the ‘Vinopolis vineyard tour’, which included 6 standard wine tastings, 3 premium wine tastings and a Bombay Saphire cocktail tasting. We sat on the wooden benches just outside the ‘How to taste wine session’ arena and a nice woman came round to take our little tickets. If you’ve never been to Vinopolis – both Jeff and I would highly recommend it. What happens is, you buy a ‘tour’ which is a self guided tour and you are given a number of paper tickets on a card. You are also given a tasting notebook, which holds up to 45 different wines and a pencil to write all the comments down. You redeem each ticket for a 30 ml ‘shot’ of wine and you can choose from about 150 different bottles. You can choose tours which include rum tastings, whiskey tastings, beer tastings – however as I wasn’t keen on any of those, Jeff and I just stuck to wine and gin :-)

We enjoyed the ‘how to taste wine’ session and even though I had been before, I did actually learn some other interesting things, things that I will hopefully remember – for example, the longer the ‘legs’ on the wine, the sweeter it is. After the session, we went straight to the premium wines as they were directly facing us. I have a bit of a sweet tooth, so stuck to quite sweet wines, whereas Jeff went for a lot of red ‘peppery’ wines. I had a really nice wine ‘Domaine Bottgeyl Les Elements 2009’ which is a French wine that uses Gewurztraminer grapes. It was lovely – sweet, but not too sweet and very, very drinkable. Even Jeff didn’t think it was offensive, and we have very different tastes in wine!

After we had used up all three of our premium wine tickets, we decided that we would ‘upgrade’ (something you can do, if you want to buy extra tickets to various things) and do the Champagne tasting. It was only £5 for 3 tickets, however you don’t get very much. Jeff and I didn’t mind though, as we weren’t really there to get totally drunk and just thought it would be nice to learn a bit more about various wines. The bloke in the Champagne area was brilliant and a total Dude. ‘Vincent’, explained everything – how to tell if the champagne is a vintage, the difference between the various different champagnes. He was polite, interesting and really, really nice. Jeff and I had a really nice chat with him and we didn’t feel rushed at all as for a Saturday, it wasn’t too busy.

We then redeemed all of our standard wines – I found another amazing one from Canada called ‘Framboise’ from Southbrook Farms. It’s a fruit wine that’s made from Raspberries and tastes pretty much like Raspberry jam. It was gorgeous! I let Jeff have my Bombay Sapphire ticket as I’ve never been too keen on gin and it seemed stupid to drink something you know you wouldn’t enjoy.

Jeff and I spent about 2.5 hours in Vinopolis – we could have spent longer in there easily, however, we had a restaurant reservation for 6:00pm at Marco Pierre White’s Steak and ale house (http://www.mpwsteakandalehouse.org) and we wanted to get some lunch beforehand, so we weren’t too drunk! Thankfully, next to Vinopolis is a Waggamama’s so we headed in there for a quick amai udon / ginger chicken udon and then went for a rather long walk from the South Bank to Covent Garden. I think it took us about 50 minutes to get there, which was fine, however when we arrived, Covent garden was literally crawling with football fans.

I’ll be totally honest – neither Jeff nor myself are ‘into’ football in the slightest and therefore we weren’t overly keen at the loud football chants that we kept hearing every 30 seconds. Whilst there weren’t any fights, nor any acts of violence, it was quite intimidating walking through massive crowds of very large, bulky blokes who were quite drunk, shouting loudly. I absolutely love Covent Garden, but not on that Saturday! Jeff and I decided it would be best to leave – we did head for a tube station, but it was so, so busy we realised that it would have taken ages to get a tube, so even though we had travel cards, we opted to get a taxi from Leicester Square and asked the driver to take us to Marco Pierre White’s restaurant. It didn’t take us too long to get there and we went for a coffee as we were a bit early (5:20!).

The actual restaurant was absolutely brilliant. It’s not cheap, not by a long shot, however I personally think it’s worth the money. The staff were really polite, extremely attentive and our food (we had a main and a desert) was cooked to perfection. We both asked for ‘rare’ steaks and that’s exactly what we got. The ‘triple cooked chips’ were brilliant and my sticky toffee pudding was just melt in the mouth’. We left feeling very, very full, but very content!

Jeff and I were absolutely knackered when we headed back on the train and we went to bed soon after we got in. However, we had had a brilliant, brilliant day and crossed two things off our ‘to do list’ :-) The best thing was though, we still had Sunday to go…. Another brilliant day of doing really cool things together…..

- Molly