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

Eurovision + cake + Farmers market = Great weekend!

The end of this week hopefully marks the end of some other things – the end of work stress being the biggest one. Now that my company has moved offices, I am already finding myself sleeping much better and hopefully this means I am a nicer and less stressy person when I am with Jeff.

Jeff and I have had a pretty awesome weekend. I arrived around his house on Saturday at around midday (before that, I was in Swindon at a very well known tattoo parlous called ‘Skin Graffiti’ asking Mike, one of the lead tattoo guys about getting another tattoo) and was in a great mood due to booking my next tattoo – just over a month to go, I can’t wait! I *had* sent Jeff a Graze box as a present in the post, however the postman doesn’t seem to deliver Jeff’s mail until after midday, so I actually arrived at Jeff’s house before it got delivered which was a bit annoying! We had a little bit of a chat and straight away headed out to Windsor, where we had decided we would get a spot of lunch and do some ‘mooching’.

Getting to Windsor wasn’t a problem at all, however actually driving around Windsor, especially to the car park was a massive issue – the traffic light system seems really awful and due to the number of tourists that were there, every time someone pressed the button to cross the road, the lights instantly changed, even if they had just changed to green, seconds before – cue literally, a massive ‘queue of traffic!’ We had thought that our bad luck had gone when we found a parking space, however we had a little bit more bad luck when all the ‘pay and display’ machines had been changed recently to accept card payments. All well and good, however it would be nice if they actually WORK…. Jeff tried one, waited for ages and then got ‘Card reader not available, TPS call needed’ – er….. okaaaay, so we walked to another machine and after 5 minutes of waiting for the machine to connect to Jeff’s bank etc, it finally gave us a ticket. I know technology should make our lives better, but when it takes you more than DOUBLE the amount of time to pay for a parking ticket…. Does it seem worth it? Especially the amount of money it probably cost to upgrade all the machines.

After finally managing to pay, we headed straight to Waggamamas for some lunch and managed to get a table easily. As per usual, the Waggamama’s staff were great and we thoroughly enjoyed our chilli squid, duck goyoza, amai udon and ginger chicken udon – Yum! After feeling totally stuffed, we had a bit of a wander around town which was very successful as I managed to buy a couple of cropped cardigans which I’ve been looking for, for a while as I have a number of dresses that I’d like to wear this summer, but am not too keen on how the tops of my arms look (even though Jeff says they look fine) so now I have the cardigans, I won’t feel self conscious! I also bought a lovely cardigan from New Look and some ‘good’ vanilla extract from Lakeland plastics which, usually, would hardly have filled me with joy – however, it’s the exact type of vanilla extract that Ina Garten uses and as she is still my cooking guru, if she uses it – we need to use it in the kitchen!

We wandered round a few more shops and then decided to head to Waitrose to get the necessary ingredients so we could cook dinner later on. I had suggested to Jeff I show him how to make schnitzel – something that he was more than happy to learn as he loves the stuff! I’ve never been overly keen on Waitrose, however the Waitrose in Windsor seems exceptionally well stocked and we managed to find most of the ingredients we needed, the only thing we couldn’t find was red cabbage that was able to be microwaved which meant we just bought a red cabbage and decided we’d give it a go ourselves!

We wandered back to the car with all our shopping and headed off to the Windsor farm shop to buy the fresh pork that we needed for the schnitzel – Jeff seems to rather like the Windsor farm shop and I can’t blame him. It seems they have recently had a massive renovation and it looks a lot brighter and a lot more modern – still (unfortunately) quite an expensive place to go, however the meat does taste exceptionally nice so whilst we couldn’t really afford to shop there all the time, it’s certainly a nice treat to buy such good quality meat every once in a while.

We drove home and on the way back, I started to get really tired so Jeff and I chilled on the sofa for an hour or so, as soon as we got in. What did we watch? Well, we certainly didn’t deviate from our ‘normal’ shows, so we watched a couple of Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basic programs, and another episode of ‘Monsters inside me’, which was quite interesting considering that a bloke had 5 maggots living inside his head – lovely, I know!

We started to cook after that, however that was brought to a complete standstill for a few minutes when Jeff’s dishwasher decided to start leaking – I discovered this when I walked round the kitchen and suddenly found my sock was very wet! Hopefully Jeff can call someone out to fix it this week, however until then – he’s got a couple of cups under the dishwasher, so it doesn’t leak all over his floor again.

We cooked the onion, added the cabbage, white wine vinegar and some sugar. It tasted really nice, however we both agreed that the cabbage needed to be cooked for slightly longer next time. However, considering we’d never done it before, we thought we did a rather good job! Jeff liked the schnitzel and as he’s still alive as I’m writing this, my cooking didn’t kill him :-)

Yesterday, the Eurovision song contest was on television so we decided we would watch that. It’s not really that good, however it is amusing, and entertaining. Just before it started, I suggested to Jeff we make a cake, ‘just because’ and we found a recipe for a blueberry cake online where the only ingredient we didn’t have in the cupboard was the fresh blueberries. We quickly drove to the nearest supermarket and bought a couple of punnets before heading back and baking the cake – I didn’t read the recipe completely correctly and we added some of the ingredients in the wrong order, but considering we didn’t do the thing exactly right, it actually turned out really well! It smelt divine and it tasted really, really nice – we had some warm, with ice cream, not exactly healthy, but, well.. sod it… it’s sometimes nice to treat yourself.

We then settled down to watch the rest of the Eurovision song contest and made it until 11:00pm, until I got very, very tired so suggested to Jeff that we went to bed, which we did (as Jeff is so laid back he’s usually very happy to go to bed whenever I’m tired – he never usually gets tired before me).

Sunday morning, I woke Jeff up and after some cuddles in bed, we drove down to Southsea, which is where the Hampshire Farmers market were holding their Sunday market. We hadn’t been to the one in Southsea before and took this opportunity to see if it was better than Winchester. It didn’t take that long to drive to Portsmouth and I was surprised at how pretty and clean the place was. Jeff had been to Portsmouth a lot more recently than me (his ex came from the Isle of Wight) so knew his way around a lot better than me. We parked relatively easily and wandered to the market, which was only a few hundred meters away. We were both pleasantly impressed at how big the market was – not as big as Winchester, but not far off, and one of the good points was, the bloke who sold THE most gorgeous tomato bread was there, so obviously we bought some more lovely bread and also managed to buy some more cheese, meat and apple juice (which was gorgeous). I also bought a sausage roll, which Jeff and I shared – it was the nicest one we had ever tasted, loads of sausage meat and just enough moist pastry – bliss!

We headed back home with our stash of goodies and embarked on the BBQ. Jeff cooked this time as I was feeling a bit cold-ridden (I still don’t know if I’m getting a cold or not, we shall have to see). So I sat on a chair by the door whilst Jeff cooked the meat.

Jeff’s garden is looking absolutely superb – everything is growing loads and our sunflowers, herb pot and lettuce are doing especially well. The strawberries we purchased a few weeks ago are all flowering and even the radishes, which we thought we had killed when we re-potted them, have sprung back into life. I suggested to Jeff that I pull a few radishes up and prepare them (just for him as I’m not fond of radishes) and Jeff thought this was a good idea. Out of the 4 that I pulled up, 2 were rotten and had maggots living inside them, however 2 seemed absolutely fine, so I washed and prepared them and they must have been OK, as Jeff didn’t have a problem eating them – so there we go, we have successful grown AND eaten some radishes. I think we are both hoping that the tomatoes, lettuce and peppers hurry up – I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of strawberries, cherries or blackberries this year, but as it’s the first year that we’re growing them, I think we’re prepared for this.

We had a gorgeous lunch inside, at Jeff’s dining table and a quick cuddle before I headed home. It had been another brilliant weekend and I’m hoping that the time we spent together in the bank holiday weekend (in 2 weeks time) will be just as good. I did tell Jeff what we’re doing as I’m pretty awful at keeping secrets and he now knows that we’re going wine tasting on the Saturday, followed by a rather nice steak restaurant – cool!

We’re next seeing each other on Wednesday night and as we have the food already sorted, we’re going to have to think of other things to do, to keep ourselves entertained :-)

- Molly