Grabbing a few hours on Saturday night

Although Jeff was working on Saturday, I popped over to his house at 5:30pm so I could pop his slow cooker on and cook the pork shoulder that we bought at Winchester Farmers market a few weeks ago. As per usual, I don’t like the idea of Jeff not having anything nice to eat whilst he’s at work and whilst he is more than capable of buying stuff at work or cooking something himself, I enjoy cooking, so set about making him a healthy ‘toad in the hole’ where I stuck a couple of tablespoons of wholegrain real ale mustard into the batter before cooking it in the oven.

As soon as I arrived I also filled up the 5 bird feeders that Jeff currently has hanging from his bird tree in the garden – The birds are going through a hell of a lot of seed at the moment and Jeff is already on the 2nd 15Kg bad that we bought less than a couple of months ago.

After cooking the Toad in the hole and putting the slow cooker on, I started watching some of the programs that Jeff and I had set to record on his Sky plus box. ‘Bridalplasty’ – seriously, the worst reality TV show I have ever watched in my life…. Ever. If you’ve never seen it, then thank God you’ve not wasted an hour, or more of your life watching incredibly shallow and bitchy women compete over tasks to be ‘top bride’ to win various plastic surgeries. I guess I could kind of understand it if the women on the program are really overweight Mingers, but they’re not! They’re all very slim, very attractive women and for women like that to want to compete for various nose jobs, boob jobs etc – Crikey.. it was certainly an eye opener.

As much as I wanted to sit down for an hour and feel my brain turn to pulp, I started getting restless after about 30 minutes (I guess even I have a limit as to how much rubbish TV I can watch) so I decided to make some fairy cakes – Jeff had all the necessary ingredients in his cupboard so I found a recipe online and made 24 little cakes. A bit of a twist on the normal recipe as I used custard powder as well - http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1864/glamorous-fairy-cakes

Jeff opened the door at about 7:45pm – we had a chat, settled down to watch some more crappy TV (‘Embarrassing bodies’ and ‘Beauty and the Best – the ugly face of prejudice’) and drank a bottle of very nice 2006 Riesling that I bought from a wine warehouse just before Christmas. The pork wasn’t quite ready so we didn’t eat until about 8:30pm, however when we did, it was gorgeous – we had it with red cabbage and carrot and potato mash (I’d slow cooked the pork on a bed of shallots and carrots).

In a couple of weeks, Jeff and I are off to a Spa – we’re both taking a day off work and I’m taking him to the Spa I usually go to which will be quite nice. I’ve also got a very cool ‘surprise’ weekend planned for him on the 26th / 27th March (I’m sure he’ll write a Blog about it) So… stay tuned for Blogs about something other than cooking!