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