Today was quite a monumental day in some ways – Even though Jeff and I were together for 3.5 years, he had never met my parents (various reasons) and after we got back in contact last November he said it was the one thing he was most hurt over – So… if we are to have any chance of making this work, we both need to change certain things that we did last time and in my case, this means being more open with Jeff and integrating him into my life more. I stayed over Jeff’s house last night (Saturday) and we were going to cook something easy, however I suggested wandering into town and going to Waggamamas – Jeff thought this was an excellent idea and we left straight away. Waggamamas as per usual was excellent and even though it was a Saturday night the service was pretty snappy. I had my usual ‘amai udon’ with wholewheat noodles and chilli squid, however Jeff tried a chicken chilli mein which he said grew on him, along with some gyoza – yummy!
We got back, watched more random TV that I had recorded on Jeff’s sky plus box and had a relatively early night – come 7:30am the next morning I was already awake, so woke Jeff up and we toddled off to a Starbucks half way between where my Mum was and Jeff’s house. Hmmm, Starbucks fruit bread is divine! I’m currently rather obsessed with the stuff and Jeff seems to be quite sold on it as well. We then headed over to meet my Mum at 10:00am which seemed to go well. It was only a quick meeting as my Mum was actually working, but she said Jeff seemed ‘awfully polite’ which can’t be a bad thing!
As it was still quite early, Jeff and I decided to drive back and found a small farmers market in the middle of one of the towns – we only bought a few things, but it was nice to get out of the car and explore another fun market.
We decided we were going to bake something else (we still need to try and think of a desert to cook for Jeff’s parents when we visit them at Easter) so I looked up recipe’s on the BBC good food website whilst Jeff drove back home. We decided on ‘sticky toffee pudding’ a low fat version, of course and got all the necessary ingredients in Tesco’s
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3070/guiltfree-sticky-toffee-puds
It took absolutely AGES to find the maple syrup, you’d think it would be in the same isle as the jams and golden syrup wouldn’t you? But nope, it’s actually in the ‘Long life milk’ section – God knows why, most strange.
With everything bought, we headed back home and chilled for a couple of hours – we were just about to start baking when we realised that the recipe called for a food processing – something that Jeff doesn’t own so off we went in the car again to Argos to buy a food processor. After the success I have had with my slow cooked recipes, Jeff decided to also buy a relatively cheap slow cooker so that should keep us busy for a few months! It was torrential rain so we literally ran back to the car and I sat with both big boxes on my lap as Jeff drove home.
We started cooking straight away and it was a pretty simple recipe to do, however the consistency of the mixture looked really runny, therefore I decided to put some extra flour in it. It did take a rather long time to cook in the oven and we had to check it 3 times to make sure it was cooked properly – result? Nice, however it didn’t really taste of toffee and it was rather heavy. Jeff and I managed to polish one off each, so yeah, not a total disaster! We’re going to try and make them again with less flour and try and make them taste more like toffee – Second attempt will be on Wednesday when we also slow cook the gammon joint we bought from the Farmers market today :-)
As usual it was a lovely day spent with Jeff and it’s a shame we can’t win the lottery and do this kind of thing all the time. Sadly ‘real life’ beckons us, so until Jeff or I pick the winning numbers we’ll just have to continue as we are – can’t complain though, 2011 seems to be a much better year than 2010!
- Molly
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