Jeff and I had a really fun night last night – In fact, it was also a rather fun afternoon as I had to retake my ITIL exam, which meant that I was free from 2:30pm and whilst I suppose I *could* have gone back to work, no one expected me in the office, so I decided I would take advantage of that fact and go and spend some time with Jeff. Jeff is currently working his last ever set of night shifts, he has tonight (Friday) and tomorrow.. and then that’s it! He becomes a normal nine-to-fiver.
I think my exam went better than it did last time, so hopefully I will be able to update the Blog in about a week with the news that I passed, fingers crossed, anyway. I saw Jeff and we decided we would go and get some lunch as I was starving. We also decided to get the ingredients for ‘Parkers Beef Stew’ One of the Ina Garten recipes from her book, ‘Back to basics’. We settled for the Morrison’s supermarket for once, as they do really nice salads and before long, we were heading back to Jeff’s house, not only with two salads (complete with crunchy bacon bits) but also with 2 more bags of compost, some more seeds and all the necessary ingredients for the stew.
After getting back we watched a couple of ‘Barefoot Contessa’ shows – due to me being in Las Vegas last week, we have 11 episodes still to watch, so we’re trying to get through them as quickly as possible. We munched our salads and for once, I only managed to spill food on myself once – which is quite good going I thought. After lunch, Jeff and I potted all the new seeds – It should be quite fun seeing massive sunflowers flowering, as well as eating our organic lettuces and tomatoes. The tomatoes inside are doing REALLY well and Jeff’s cherry tree is flowering! In fact, everything is doing rather well and I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of growth in the next few weeks due to the weather getting warmer.
Once we had done all the gardening, Jeff and I watched some more trashy TV including an episode of ‘Embarrassing bodies’ (I don’t think it’s possible for Dr Christian’s shirts to get any more garish – thankfully he’s got a big enough personality to pull them off without looking like a Pratt). We then decided we needed to start cooking as we knew the stew had to be in the oven for about 2 hours.
It took us about an hour to prep everything and stick the stew in the oven. This including the marinating of the beef in the red wine, sticking the beef in flour and then frying it in portions, before putting it into the ‘Dutch Oven’ (Casserole dish, to us English peeps) and into the actual oven. Jeff and I had also bought some wine when we were in the Supermarket – even though Jeff was working that night, he had a few hours off at the beginning of his shift so he didn’t need to start work until midnight. Due to that, Jeff had a glass of wine, but I had more than him as I wasn’t working until the following day. Whilst it was a Rose – it was pretty strong and quite quickly I was feeling the affects of it.
We realised we had forgotten peas for the stew, so I suggested we go and get them, and some bread to eat with the Stew. We set out for a much closer Supermarket and ended up buying doughnuts as well – This is totally my fault as when I get even slightly tipsy, I end up with the munchies – Jeff and I split both doughnuts in half so we got some of the chocolate one and some of the caramel one. Jeff preferred the caramel, I preferred the other one :-)
Even though we had basically had our pudding before our main course, when we did get round to eating the stew it was well worth the wait. It was absolutely gorgeous! We had bought ‘Sour dough bread’ to eat with the stew and it worked really, really well. Both of us were incredibly full afterwards and there was still loads and loads of stew left. So much stew that Jeff took some to work with him last night and we managed to fill a massive plastic container 2/3rds of the way, full.
It was a lovely night and as with all lovely things, they are over too quickly. Jeff said goodnight to me and I snuggled up in his bed, whilst he went to work. I didn’t see him this morning because although he should have been back before I went to work, he helped a work colleague get home as his work colleague had a flat battery. That’s the nice kind of person Jeff is, so I am sure I can wait for a cuddle until Sunday!
On Sunday, I think we’re going to a different farmers market and doing another Ina Garten recipe – another one from her ‘Back to Basics’ book and this time it’s going to involve fish! I think we’re both excited, knowing that we’re going to Northumberland within a week… I know I am!
- Molly
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