Amazingly busy weekend

Do you ever have weekends where you just really don’t want them to be over? More so than usual? This is certainly one of them as Jeff and I had a really great couple of days and sadly it’s going to be months before we can spend another weekend together.

It started off really well when Jeff emailed me on Friday night, from work, saying he had actually got his time off authorised – this meant he could go home a few hours early and I could pop over early on Saturday morning so we could get cracking on all the ‘cool’ stuff we had planned to do! I drove over to his for 11:00am and we got straight into the car and headed off to a local butchers which I had been told about by a work colleague. What made this butchers different, is that they sold ‘unusual’ meat such as ostrich, alligator, kangaroo etc. I thought it might be quite fun for us to try and cook something different so I ordered 2 kangaroo and 2 ostrich steaks earlier on in the week and said I would pick them up on Saturday.

As Jeff usually drives, I offered to drive us there which was great in theory, but we got rather lost and I ended up driving up rather windy roads, doubling back on myself more than once and don’t mind admitting that I was close to giving up! We did eventually find the butchers but it certainly wasn’t easy! One of the nicest things about the place was we had to drive down this windy track and there were loads of wild quails in the grass – they looked very cute and whilst I was born and raised in the countryside, I had never seen wild quails before, not sure why, I guess they just didn’t like the county I lived in!

With the meat bought, we headed back to Jeff’s house and popped the kangaroo steaks in the freezer and started to defrost the ostrich steaks so we could start cooking them a few hours later. We then swapped cars and Jeff and I headed off to Hampton Court. As it’s ‘low season’ Hampton Court stops selling tickets at 3:30pm, so we wanted to get there as early as possible to give us chance to look around the place properly. I had been there before, but Jeff hadn’t, so it was nice to do something together but it also felt nice doing something that Jeff hadn’t done with anyone else before.

Hampton Court was, as always, very beautiful – the gardens especially. We had a lovely few hours walking around the place and holding hands through the gardens before ending up in the small café for a very well deserved cup of tea! On the way back we had decided to go food shopping to get all the ingredients for our recipes that we were planning on trying that night and poor Jeff ended up £50 poorer! (I am planning on contributing to the next few shops so I don’t sponge off him, I am very paranoid about that!).

Whilst being very knackered when we got back to Jeff’s, somehow we ended up in the kitchen and got straight on with marinating the ostrich and cooking a couple of ‘low fat’ puddings that caught my eye in my food magazine (I tear out the recipes I like the sound of and keep them in a binder). We made low fat ginger puddings with light ice cream and berry parfaits. I think we were both bloody impressed with the ginger puddings – they were brilliant and tasted gorgeous. We decided that with a little less ginger and perhaps a lighter mix, they’d be perfect. Sadly the berry parfaits didn’t turn out as well and whilst they looked rather attractive, the sauce was too tart and the recipe said you needed a ripe banana to mash up and mix into the mixture – we didn’t feel it tasted that nice and so we probably won’t be doing that one again.

The ostrich on the other hand – total success! Well, it probably would have tasted nicer if we hadn’t been drinking vodka and Ameretto and had got slightly drunk, forgot about the grilling ostrich and then remembered 10 minutes later so it was ever so slightly burnt, but hey – we called it ‘well done’ and it tasted quite fruity – we’d certainly eat it again and are planning on buying some more, soon. We served it with vegetables and were quite chuffed that we had done something different.

The rest of Saturday night was spent watching films and pre-recorded TV and generally enjoying being with each other.

Sunday morning – lie in? Of course not! Jeff and I got up and made ‘Almond puff pancakes’ which I thought looked really nice – Jeff used the mini frying pan I had bought him for his birthday and we made a really nice stack of them. We chose this recipe as it was low carb (0.9g per pancake) and low fat (89 calories per pancake) however, I thought they tasted vile so refused to eat more than one mouthful. Jeff didn’t mind them so ate his and then mine, but as they contained ground almond the texture was really strange and not what I was expecting.

After the breakfast disaster we headed to a nearby Farmers market and despite the rain, had a really nice time buying some different meats and random things – blueberry jam, a whole crab (which we are planning on dressing at some point – it’s currently in Jeff’s freezer) a haunch of venison and some parmesan cheese. We also bought some venison and pork meatballs which we had for lunch when we got back – they were lovely!

On the way back we went to the garden centre to buy some compost so that Jeff and I could plant the tulip bulbs that we bought in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. Jeff also bought a couple more bird feeders as he’s found that the birds in his garden are so greedy, they empty his feeders within a couple of days and if he’s working a shift it can be tricky to refill them quickly which means the birds don’t get fed for a while!

We potted our tulips in Jeff’s garage and also planted the sweet peas we had bought in Amsterdam flower market. I suggested to Jeff we make some pyramids with some garden canes so the peas have something to climb up and we could pop them on his patio in the back garden – I think they will smell gorgeous, especially in the summer when we have BBQ’s on summer evenings and smell the sweet peas!

Unfortunately I had to leave shortly after our garden adventure and driving away was pretty crap – Jeff and I did so much this weekend and I enjoyed every minute of it. Thankfully we’ve got loads of fun things planned in the weeks to come and I guess it makes me realise more so than before, how lucky I am that we’ve got back in contact and it’s as if we’ve both been given a ‘second chance’ with each other.

-Molly