BBC Good Food show

Jeff and I had an amazing weekend – we did so much stuff and it was such good fun. If you’ve never been to the BBC Good Food show in Birmingham NEC, then go, go! (I can say that as I’ve already got our tickets to the winter show, so I don’t mind :-) )

I arrived at Jeff’s house on Friday night and the weather was dire – rain, rain and more rain! Unfortunately this limited what we could get up to, however we seemed to manage OK. Firstly – the strawberry! We have successfully managed to grow our own food again, this time, the strawberry plants seem to have gone mad and a lot of strawberries have appeared. I spotted the first ripe one on Friday so picked it – it was really nice (although I guess we were biased!) Sadly we won’t have enough this year to cook with them, but as they’re all producing baby plants already, we’re hoping that next year we’ll have loads more plants and therefore, loads more strawberries.

As we’re hatching eggs (or trying to) I had ordered an incubator over a week ago. On Friday it still hadn’t turned up and after contacting the Ebay seller, who said she had posted it First Class on Monday, it looked like the parcel was lost in the post. I wouldn’t have normally minded, however we already had the 6 black Orpington Eggs and the 6 Belgian d’uccle eggs and if we didn’t start incubating them soon – they wouldn’t hatch. Therefore I asked the Ebay seller if Jeff and I could perhaps, drive round her house (she only lives in Andover, so not too far away from us) and buy one from her. She was very obliging and thankfully she had another incubator. So Friday night saw Jeff and myself driving over to Andover to pick up an incubator. We got back and turned it on straight away, as apparently it’s a good idea to get the incubator up to a constant temperature before putting the eggs in.

Saturday morning saw us getting up at 6:00am and putting the eggs into the incubator – thankfully the incubator worked fine and was at exactly 37.5 degrees – perfect temperature! We set off by 7:00am as it was just over 2 hours to get up to Birmingham – I felt so tired so we did stop off half way and get a cheeky Starbucks.

We managed to get to the Birmingham NEC for 9:00am and it was already quite busy. When we got inside I think both of us were really impressed – there were loads and loads of stands – food, wine, cookery implements – it was amazing! We also got to wander round ‘Gardeners world live’ which was quite funky. There were some really nice jewellery stands, however I was actually quite good and resisted buying anything! Another quite cool thing, was that there were loads and loads of free samples of things – free Carte Dor icecream, free Crabbie’s Ginger Beer , free cheese – parmesan cheese no-less and we sampled ones that had been matured for 18, 22 and 24 months (the difference was quite impressive!).

Jeff and I were like kids in a Sweetshop, however, unlike kids – we had our debit cards, which were used quite heavily. We bought chocolate wine, hazelnut liquor (absolutely gorgeous) Elderflower Cider…. Just loads and loads of really cool things. I even got a knife Sharpener, something that I have wanted for ages. We didn’t watch any of the live MasterChef presentations as we were too busy wandering around the stalls, however I think next time, we might try and find a seat.

Unfortunately but expectedly, it started getting busier and busier which meant that it was harder to wander round and also harder to view what was on offer on certain stands. Also, the more we bought, the more things we had to carry and after 3 hours, both Jeff and I were carrying about 6-7 bags each, our hands were hurting quite a lot!

We left by 12:30pm, pretty knackered – we could have probably spent another 30 minutes to an hour in there, but not carrying that amount of purchases so I think when we go in November, we’ll be taking a rucksack and also probably taking advantage of the NEC’s ‘Shop and Drop’ as they only charge £1 to look after certain things…

We had actually booked a Premier Inn to stay in as we thought the drive would be too much, but we actually drove back to Jeff’s house the same day and arrived back home by 15:30 – that even included a quick trip to a local farm shop to get some food for Saturday night.

Once back at Jeff’s, we chilled, watched a lot of episodes of ‘Come dine with me’ and drank the cider that we had bought a few hours earlier. It was rather yummy. We also purveyed our purchases – we did buy quite a lot of cool things!

Dinner on Saturday night was steak – marinated in the BBQ sauce we had purchased at the BBC Good Food show. It was accompanied by Cajun sweet potato chips and honey roasted carrots and broccoli. For pudding, it was a summer fruits pie – also bought at the show and that was very yummy too. Even though Jeff was knackered, he rubbed my shoulders which I really appreciated as they were hurting quite a lot from carrying all the bags.

Sunday morning and I actually managed a lie in! Well, I say ‘Lie in’ – it was after 08:00am which is quite impressive for me. Jeff and I got up, we turned the eggs and had a cup of tea whilst we decided what to do. We had dismissed the idea of going to a Farmers market as we had gone to the BBC Good Food show the day before, however Jeff didn’t mind driving to SouthSea and the weather wasn’t overly great so we couldn’t really go out to a National Trust property so we decided we’d go. However, before we did, we made loads and loads of sausage rolls from a recipe in my July 2011 BBC Good Food Magazine. It was a weird recipe as contained lentils and nutmeg, however after we’d cooked them and tried one, they did turn out to be quite yummy. Jeff and I are going to take some into work for our colleagues and I am planning on giving some to my Father as I am seeing my parents on Tuesday.

Once we had made all the sausage rolls, we got in the car and headed down the Motorway to the Farmers market. We were very glad we did, as Southsea actually had a food festival on! It was very similar in some ways to the show in Birmingham. Jeff and I ate quite a lot of interesting things and Jeff managed to buy some more yummy tomato bread which he said he’d eat tonight. We spent an hour wandering around, looking at all the stalls and sampling some of the interesting things they had on offer before heading back home.

I headed off shortly afterwards as I was feeling a bit crap and didn’t want to take it out on Jeff like I felt I had been doing for the last few weeks – I’ve got a presentation tomorrow at work which I’m really nervous of, and whilst Jeff is supportive, I didn’t really want him to say in his usual way ‘You’ll be fine’, as even though I won’t die or get sacked etc, I’m totally bricking it and it doesn’t help to be told that at the moment!

We’re seeing each other on Wednesday and I’m hoping we can have a lovely, relaxing and nice evening.

- Molly

Jeff and I are going to be parents....

I’ve been a bit remiss in updating our Blog – Jeff and I did actually spend Wednesday night together, however this only stretched to a couple of hours as I had a very busy day on Thursday and had to get back home to sort things out.

Surprisingly, after I got to Jeff’s I couldn’t really do much cleaning as Jeff had got wise to what I was doing and already did the washing – curses! I was foiled! So, after feeding the birds (they really are little, greedy things) I watched ‘Bums, boobs and botox’ on Jeff’s Sky Plus box and waited until he got back home. Poor Jeff is having to put up with me still being stressy at the moment and after keeping a blog – I realise that I’m not the easiest person to be with! This time, I was stressed over the fact that our incubator hadn’t turned up yet.

Jeff and I are going to hatch chickens and I have started another blog about it:

http://mollyandjeff-hatchingchicks.blogspot.com/

We’ve already got both sets of eggs and I had purchased the incubator from Ebay last week. The delivery time said 4-5 days and today was the 5th day. After contacting the seller on Ebay, they replied very quickly and said they had posted it first class on Monday so it should have certainly been here today – I have a feeling it’s got lost in the post….

Anyway, Jeff was trying to tell me that it was only Wednesday and that it would turn up soon enough. I, on the other hand, was worried that if it didn’t turn up by Friday (i.e. today) that we wouldn’t be able to start hatching our eggs on Sunday and they’d be useless. Once again, it’s obvious that Jeff is the laid back one in our relationship and I’m the worrier!

After Jeff had tried to calm me down, we went out to B&Q to try and find a thermometer – Why? Because apparently our eggs should be kept at about 12 degrees and if we kept them in Jeff’s main house, they would be too warm and if we kept them outside, they’d be too cold. So, we decided to keep them in Jeff’s garage and I wanted to know what the temperature was. Thankfully, we managed to find a thermometer very quickly and after we’d bought it, we picked up Waggamama’s takeaway (I know, I know – not the most healthy of things in the world, but at least it wasn’t curry!) and went back to Jeff’s house to eat dinner and chat.

Once dinner was finished (and very nice it was, too!) we put our future children in Jeff’s garage, tilted 45 degrees on some blocks of wood. In the last couple of days, Jeff has been really good and has been changing the tilt twice a day – I guess that’s the kind of thing you look for in a partner you may want to have children with one day… Can they cope with kids on their own and will they be a supportive partner? Well, looks like Jeff is able to cope with the eggs on his own!

Tomorrow we’re off to the BBC Good Food show..

- Molly

Carrot cake and rain

Well, another weekend is over and done with and unfortunately both myself and Jeff are back at work for another fun filled week! (Well, I say ‘week’, I’m actually on holiday on Friday as I’m getting my tattoo on Thursday night so having Friday off to recover, can’t wait, not nervous at all... yet!).

As I was at a friends wedding blessing on Saturday, I wasn’t able to see Jeff until Sunday afternoon. However, we had already decided what we were going to do, so after we had said hello and I had fed the birdies (as Jeff hadn’t had time and they were totally out of bird seed) we decided we would make a carrot cake so that I could take it to work the next day for my colleagues.

Once again, we decided to turn to the BBC Good food recipe archive (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3229/yummy-scrummy-carrot-cake) and the recipe didn’t disappoint us as it turned out really well indeed! I’ve never had carrot cake before as I assumed (wrongly) that it would taste of carrot. I am probably weird, however I don’t mind cooked carrot, but am not keen on raw carrot so the idea of raw carrot in a cake has never appealed to me. However, as we had a little bit of mixture left over, I made 3 small muffins and Jeff and I shared them, rather than cutting into the big cake and spoiling it. It didn’t take long to do and it smelt rather nice. Even the icing was nice and that took about 30 seconds to apply. Once it was cool, I stuck it into a box and took it into work on the Monday – it was very well received!

Once Jeff and I had finished making the cake, we started watching some TV. Unfortunately most of the Ina Garten episodes that Jeff had recorded on his Sky Plus box – we had already seen, so we didn’t really have any more Barefoot Contessa to watch which was a bit of a pain. We did watch an episode of ‘Monsters inside me’ which contained an interesting ‘brain eating amoeba’, however as we got to the end of that, I got really restless – it was horrendous weather outside, it was 7:00pm and sitting in front of the television for ages seemed really pointless.

Even though I had bought food for Jeff and I, I suggested we go out to eat as 1) it would give us something to do and 2) I just couldn’t be bothered to cook. I did feel quite guilty as this is hardly ‘healthy eating’ which as I have started before, Jeff and I are keen to continue – however I think we’re going to eat the food I brought yesterday, on Wednesday so at least it won’t go to waste. I suggested we went to this amazing Nepalese restaurant called ‘Ghurkha Square’ which is in fleet (http://www.gurkhasquare.com/) We have been before – about 2.5 years ago and I remember it being really, really nice. Jeff drove us there and it didn’t take very long at all, which was good.

The food and the service were absolutely brilliant – we loved it. We had a really nice starter, Jeff had a beer and I had a really massive glass of wine which got me rather tipsy. Even though there weren’t many people in the restaurant (it was a rainy, Sunday night I guess) the staff didn’t ‘hang around’ and make you feel self conscious and the service was just brilliant. Jeff said he hadn’t been there since we went last time and I said the same – it felt a bit weird remembering where we last sat, considering we hadn’t been there for so long, but it was nice in a way. We did enter the ‘How would you propose’ territory, which was slightly odd – however Jeff stated (correctly) that if we ever did get engaged, I would want to be the one doing the asking and I agreed – I’ve always thought it seems rather, erm.. ‘pathetic’ for the woman to wait, hint, wait some more, get annoyed as the bloke hasn’t taken the hint, start leaving wedding magazines round the house, hint some more, issue ultimatum etc – if you want to get married, why not just ask the bloke?

We got back just after 9:00pm, very full and very content. It was a very nice Sunday evening. We’re off to the BBC Good Food Show on Saturday and I’m rather excited!

- Molly