Mac and Cheese and sweet peas

Jeff and I spent Wednesday evening together and it was lovely – unfortunately I didn’t stay the night as I had to drop my cat off in the cattery on Thursday morning, however we made the most of our time together.

I arrived at Jeff’s house before him as I have said before, I leave work earlier than him and only work a few miles away from where he lives. As soon as I got to Jeff’s house I decided to put some washing on for him, do some cleaning etc. Jeff arrived before I was expecting him and he caught me in his downstairs bathroom cleaning the toilet! His opinion is always ‘You don’t need to clean my house’, however I just like to be busy and useful and if he’s at work, it seems wrong to just sit down and watch TV if I could be doing something to make his life easier. Reading that back, I appreciate it makes me sound like a doormat – however I think the reason I like doing it is because Jeff DOESN’T want me to clean – and I’ve always been a rather stubborn person.... :-)

Jeff’s garden is looking really, really wonderful. Everything is growing and it looks gorgeous. Both the sweet pea pots are out in bloom and Jeff’s tomatoes are growing nicely. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been overly great recently so we haven’t been able to sit out in Jeff’s garden, on the patio and appreciate all the plants and flowers, but hopefully as Summer is now ‘officially’ here, we will be able to do it soon. I managed to water everything with Jeff’s empty Volvic bottles, before he arrived home (he doesn’t have a watering can) and filled them all up – so Jeff can water things at the weekend without it taking a long time.

As we had watched loads more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ episodes at the weekend, we had identified another recipe that we wanted to try – ‘Mac and cheese’ (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/mac-and-cheese-recipe2/index.html)  It took me ages to work out what ‘Mac’ was – duh! Macaroni of course! I managed to get all the necessary ingredients, Wednesday lunch time so we didn’t have to nip out to a Supermarket when Jeff got back home. We had a bit of a chat first, Jeff was telling me about his job (he is still enjoying it a LOT more than his old one) and I was telling Jeff all about the technical things I was up to (which is making work a lot more enjoyable than what I was doing before).

Then it came to cooking. I was in charge of the pasta and cheese sauce – Jeff was in charge of grating the cheese in the food processor, cutting up the tomatoes and making the bread crumbs. It didn’t take too long before we had everything sorted and stuck the Mac and cheese in the oven to brown for 30 minutes. Honestly – Ina Garten recipes are brilliant, they’re bloody easy to follow and usually you can get all the ingredients in a normal supermarket. The only thing that’s slightly confusing is – the measurements are all American, so you’re left wondering what a ‘quart’ of milk is (unless you are American, then I guess you know!).

30 minutes went by very quickly and we were left with the most AMAZING macaroni cheese we had ever tasted. I dread to think of the calories though.... Thankfully there was quite a lot left over so Jeff can have some tonight and tomorrow.

Whilst we had a lovely night, it came to an end too quickly and Jeff and I won’t see each other for a week as I’m off on holiday with a work friend. They say ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but I’m not sure if that’s true!

- 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

Soon the stress will be over

As I get older, it seems to be the case that not everything can ever go right in your life at the same time – last year, I had a brilliant job I was really enjoying, yet Jeff and I had split up and whilst I was ‘getting on’ with my life – going out and enjoying myself with friends as much as I could… it still felt as if something was missing. Jeff said the same thing – even though he lived with his ex-partner last year, he didn’t really enjoy his job and his relationship wasn’t overly happy.

Currently – we both have each other (something we didn’t think would be possible after we broke up in October 2009) however my job is currently exceptionally stressful, which means that I don’t have much energy when I see Jeff and it’s quite upsetting. I know there are studies that say that if you’re stressed, continually thinking about other things and unable to switch off, your libido can suffer, however: just because studies say this, it doesn’t make you feel less guilty when it happens to you. Poor Jeff has been so supportive these last few weeks – not putting any pressure on me AT ALL to have sex or do anything, however I have to admit to feeling quite guilty about not being intimate with him at the moment, especially considering he has been through ‘periods of drought’ when we were dating back in 2009 – I shudder to think how long it was, back then.

However – as per the title of this blog, the stress will hopefully soon be over and I CAN’T WAIT! My job should stop being so stressful and Jeff and I can get on with enjoying ourselves and spending loads of time together. Due to my very long working hours at the moment, Jeff and I only managed to spend Saturday night together and whilst it was very nice to see him – I was so shattered that all we really managed to do is cook (a lovely steak, broccoli with parmesan and pine nuts and sweet potato wedges with garlic) and watch some TV. We did start watching ‘Hookers saved by Jesus’ which is some random program on DMAX about prostitutes in Las Vegas who are trying to come off ‘the game’ by finding God.. however it wasn’t actually that interesting so we decided to go back to watching ‘Supersize vs Superskinny’ instead, which was much more entertaining – however that program would always be entertaining considering the colours and patterns of Dr Christian Jessen’s shirts!

It was lovely cuddling on the sofa – however by 10:00pm I had to call it a night. Jeff was fine with this and we went upstairs, cuddled and he gave me a wonderful massage before we said goodnight. I had to work today and am working all of next week, so I won’t be seeing Jeff until Wednesday – I told him today that I’m cooking him a surprise meal on Wednesday and whilst I didn’t tell him it was because I really appreciate his support over the past few weeks, that’s the real reason… I won’t say what it is, but I shall certainly report back and take some photographs – I just hope it turns out well!

No photographs this time, I’m afraid – However I shall take some photographs of Jeff’s garden soon as everything has grown so much! Our sunflowers are a good few inches tall, our tomato plants are going to need tying to bamboo canes soon and our hanging basket is looking very impressive indeed – even the radishes we nearly killed when we re-potted them, have come back!

Well, here’s to another week!

- Molly

Vodka = bad

Jeff and I just can’t seem to ‘chill’, the whole idea of sitting in front of the TV for hours on end is alien to both of us and as per usual we have managed to do an inordinate amount of stuff in less than 24 hours.

I spent most of yesterday in the spa, with a friend and Jeff played various computer games and pottered around. I got to his house for about 6pm and after watching a little bit of TV and watering the plants outside (everything seems to be going really well, still!) we decided to cook – tonight we had 2 more Ina Garten recipes to try: Steakhouse steaks (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/steakhouse-steaks-recipe/index.html) and sautéed wild mushrooms (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/sauteed-wild-mushrooms-recipe2/index.html) Jeff had got a pepper grinder with the food processor he purchased a few months ago, so we tried to do what Ina suggested and grind our own pepper – it actually seemed to work quite well and we mixed it with some salt and coated the well-oiled steaks with it.

Usually I really enjoy cooking with Jeff, however this time it wasn’t overly fun and I don’t think Jeff thought it was either. I don’t know if we were both tired, but our timings seemed really out and there wasn’t much banter between us – we just got on and did stuff, then got in each others way.

The steak was way too peppery for me and even Jeff (who loves pepper) said it was slightly too peppery. I am assuming it’s a failure on our part – as I don’t imagine that the wonderful Ina got it wrong and she hasn’t let us down so far (let us not forget the Parkers beef stew or the French apple tarts we did recently which were a resounding success!) The cooking method was brilliant though, and we both agreed that we would certainly cook the steaks in the way she suggested in her recipe. The mushrooms, on the other hand – were absolutely brilliant and tasted wonderful, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

After dinner we watched random TV and I suggested we have a few drinks – BIG mistake. For some reason 5 shots of vodka got me completely drunk and when I’m drunk, my paranoia seems to get 100 times worse. Jeff said he was going to go to the toilet quickly and I went to look on his computer for the dates to Goodwood, Festival of Speed as we had just been talking about going. I mistakenly clicked on ‘My computer’ as on my laptop – the icon for firefox is where his icon for ‘my computer’ is – however, rather than sensibly shutting the window down, I had this overwhelming urge to try and find a photograph of his ex-girlfriend to see what she looked like.

This took about 30 seconds and after I saw a photograph – I felt sick. Completely my fault and I immediately felt bad about ‘snooping’. Jeff came back and I admitted straight away what I did, asked him to password protect his computer and  got quite upset. Jeff was slightly puzzled as according to him, after his ex and he had split – he had deleted all photographs of her. After a lot of coaxing – I showed Jeff where I had found the photograph, only for Jeff to say that it wasn’t his ex, but his exes friend. Did I feel totally stupid? Yes..

I told Jeff that I could probably find out what she looked like within a minute and after 30 seconds, managed to find his exes Facebook profile, complete with loads of photos. Jeff’s response was ‘See, I told you she was ‘fugly’, However from what I could see – she was neither fat, nor ugly… however I guess that’s the thing – your partner is hardly going to say to you ‘My ex was prettier than you’, or. ‘Yes, she was short and brunette – your polar opposite’. Still, whatever anxiety I am feeling – it’s my own stupid fault and if anyone has any tips on how to stop feeling inadequate, it would be nice to hear them :-)

After the stupid episode, Jeff and I went to bed as he had to be up at 05:00am to take some of his friends to Gatwick airport. He got back by 07:50am and when I got up to go to the toilet, he said hello. He made me a cup of tea in bed and by 09:30, we had already had some fruit, watched a ‘Barefoot Contessa’ episode and headed out the door to Petersfield Farmers Market. We went to Petersfield Farmers Market a few years ago and it had torrentially rained, however hadn’t ben there since. It still wasn’t as big as Winchester but it wasn’t far off and thankfully this time round the sun was shining and the weather was really gorgeous.

We decided we were going to do another BBQ for lunch / dinner and bought lots of really nice meat, including ‘pork, goats cheese patties’ and some watercress sausages which I can’t say I overly enjoyed but hadn’t ever tried them before so they were worth trying! We also bought loads of different cheese – ‘pepper and beer’ and ‘garlic and nettle’ amongst others. After we had wandered around the market for half an hour, we headed back to the car and found a cooking shop on the way. Jeff and I both bought different types of thermometers so that we could tell what temperature the meat was, when we baked it in the oven as well as how hot various liquids were in pans.

On the way back home I suggested to Jeff we stop off in a garden centre and finally buy some herbs and the strawberry plants I had wanted for ages. £20 later and we had 5 different herbs and 6 very healthy strawberry plants heading back with us in the car.

As soon as we got home, Jeff helped me wash my car (which had been utterly filthy for the past few weeks!) and after that, I set about potting up all the new plants whilst Jeff cut the grass. Once all the ‘chores’ were done, we started on the BBQ which was really nice – we ate the meat with a lovely cheese and tomato bread and a lovely focaccia which we bought fresh at the Farmers Market this morning. We also had some nice homemade beetroot chutney which we had bought in Hexham farmers market which was gorgeous!

After food, Jeff and I watched a little bit of TV, however Jeff kept falling asleep and looking really tired – he said he was OK, however after a few minutes it was clear that he wasn’t and really should have gone to bed. I suggested I go home early and Jeff replied ‘If that’s what you want’. To be honest… I didn’t, as was looking forward to spending a few more hours with Jeff – however it was pointless (and a bit cruel) to stay as Jeff was so tired. … So I headed home and Jeff went to bed.

The next couple of weeks are going to be hell at work – so I don’t know what Jeff and I will be doing, or exactly how much time we will be spending together… I just hope we can continue doing fun things together and enjoying each others company.

- Molly

The Royal Wedding...

So the day finally arrives and everyone is talking about ‘Wills and Kate’ and all my female work colleagues seem obsessed with her wedding dress….. However, neither Jeff or I are particularly ‘in’ to the Royal Family and whilst I can’t say we wish them ill…. Neither of us really wanted to watch the wedding of the century, so we decided to go out for the day instead!

Thursday night saw us create ANOTHER new dish and try another one from the BBC Good Food magazine… ‘Fish and broccoli pie’, which didn’t turn out too badly at all. I don’t think it was as nice as the lamb kleftiko we made yesterday, but it only took an hour and was much more healthy – Hurrah! Apparently it’s healthier than normal fish pies as it doesn’t contain either salmon or butter. It kind of reminded me of a ‘Weight Watchers’ fish pie, however the sauce was a lot nicer in ours… and you actually knew which fish you were eating.

Friday morning we actually had a bit of a lie in and didn’t get up until after 8:00am – Jeff popped in the shower, whilst I sneakily made him an omelette out of all the things that were left in his fridge – pepper, onion, cheese and tomato – he seemed to like it and if he didn’t, he did a good job of hiding it as he finished the lot! I stuck to my yogurt, berries and honey. We left the house at about 09:30 and headed straight for ‘Studley Grange Butterfly world’ which took about 1.5 hours to drive to. The roads seemed pretty quiet – I guess everyone was at home, watching the Royal Wedding! Both Jeff and I had been to the place before, however not for a couple of years and it had really changed since then! There were now two butterfly houses and they now had otters, very beautiful, weird pheasants (Golden Pheasants) and other animals. I took my Canon 7D and as usual, Jeff was lovely and offered to hold my camera bag AND my handbag – There goes a man who is confident in his sexuality!

My 100mm f2.8 macro lens did a fantastic job – I hadn’t used it for absolutely ages and I really feel I took some better photographs than I ever have before. Ok, so they’re still not ‘amazing’, however – that’s what practice is for and considering I am very stressed at work at the moment, it’s been great to go out with Jeff to all these fun places and take photographs of animals and insects. ( http://www.studleygrange.co.uk/butterflyworld/ )

We actually spent nearly 2 hours in the Butterfly world before heading back to Jeff’s house via the supermarket so we could get a disposable BBQ and some food for lunch. We also decided to stop at one of the usual farm shops we frequent so we could pick up some really nice meat to do on the BBQ. Healthy eating meant we didn’t buy too much!

We started the BBQ as soon as we got back and it tasted absolutely brilliantly. We used up the last of the onion and gherkin relish that we bought in Northumberland and even though we went to the website, it seems they don’t deliver which is a shame – that being said, it means we have another excuse to go back to Hexham soon!

After the BBQ we did actually watch some of the Royal Wedding highlights and to be fair to Jeff, I should point out that it was me who wanted to watch them, not him. Even though I really don’t care about the Royal family, I know that everyone is going to be talking about it for a long time to come, and I guess I don’t want to be left out or appear ignorant over something that’s taken the nation by storm! We didn’t watch too much though, and after that we decided to watch a documentary that we had recorded called ‘Monster lobster’ which was both funny but also quite interesting – I felt quite sorry for the lobsters that had lost their claws and legs. I had to leave a few hours after that as I was meeting a friend later, therefore I suggested we take one last car ride to another supermarket to buy some compost as we really needed to re-pot the peppers. We managed to buy compost and get out of the supermarket in quite a quick time and as soon as we got back, we set to work reporting things.

Jeff’s garden is looking amazing – everything is growing and it’s really nice to see that all the hard work we put into planting things and sowing seeds has paid off. After we had re-potted the peppers, Jeff suggested we also re-pot the radishes which have needed to be re-potted for ages. Unfortunately, some of the radishes had been eaten by something – but we did have quite a few healthy ones left, so we stuck them in bigger pots and are hoping they will be ready to eat quite soon!


- Molly

French apple Tarts, Prosciutto roasted sea bass and ducklings!

Jeff and I had a really great Sunday together and I am SO EXCITED that we’re going to Northumberland in a few days. In 3 days and a few hours we’ll be on our way and hopefully it will bring back a lot of lovely memories and banish a few bad ones. The last time we were up north, Jeff’s Grandmother passed away and our relationship wasn’t that great – we weren’t very intimate with each other (my fault, not Jeff’s) and I don’t think I put in as much effort as I should have done....

.. However, argh, yes! Sunday – Well, Jeff has now finished at his company... his last set of shifts is finished and he seemed very chuffed and impressed that he was given loads of presents, including loads of alcohol and a massive card which was totally full of signatures. I popped down to see Jeff at 12:30 and after Jeff had finished his shower we drove to Andover as that’s where the Hampshire Farmers market was. I have to say – not overly impressed! It was really small compared to the Winchester one, however I guess you don’t know these things unless you go to them, so I think in future Jeff and I will be staying in Winchester. We did, however, managed to purchase a very nice Sea Bass for £10 which was great as that’s what we had decided we were cooking that night – Ina Garten’s ‘Prosciutto roasted sea bass with autumn vegetables'.

To get all the rest of the ingredients we went to Waitrose in Andover as we passed it as we were going back to the car – we managed to get everything, including a couple of rather nice tartlets for lunch, which we ate when we got back to Jeff’s house.

Once back, we ate lunch and then watched some more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ as we had 11 episodes saved on Jeff’s Sky Plus – as you can tell by now, we (and by that, I mean ‘I’) are rather obsessed with Ina and her recipes and I am looking to buy all her other cookery books when I get paid next week!

After we had ‘Chillaxed’ for a bit, we decided we had better re-pot the tomato plants, which is something we had been putting off for a few days. They have been growing at an alarming rate and it wouldn’t be long before they were too big for their pot. Thankfully, Jeff had already got enough compost and some pots to do this, so we didn’t need to go to a garden center to get anything else. It didn’t take very long and with Jeff drilling holes into the pots and me pulling the plants apart, we managed to put the tomato plants into their new home and they look like they’re going to be very happy there!

Jeff seemed to be upset at the thought of throwing the other tomato plants away, so decided he would dig some mud up in the garden, and put all the surplus plants in there – only problem was, the ground was really hard, which led to Jeff’s gardening fork having an unfortunate accident – whoops! Jeff still persevered though, and whilst I haven’t seen them, I have been told by a reliable source that all the other tomato plants are now in the garden and should be OK :-)

Jeff and I then decided we would make another culinary delight – Ina Garten’s – ‘French Apple tart’. It looked easy to make, even easier than normal as we bought frozen puff pastry so we didn’t have to make it ourselves. The hardest part of the whole thing was actually peeling and cutting up so many apples, but in the grand scheme of things, even that wasn’t very hard. I have to say, before we put it in the oven we were very pleased with ourselves as it looked EXACTLY like the photograph, hurrah! It had to be in the oven for about an hour, in which time Jeff was feeling very tired (due to the fact he had got up at midday after only 4 or so hours of sleep) so he popped upstairs for a nap and I stayed downstairs to get the tart out.

The result wasn’t too bad, however we think we had the oven up too high – Ina said 205 degrees C, however as Jeff has a fan assisted oven, we hadn’t taken that into account – damn! I used rum and apricot jam to gloss it, as suggested by the recipe and waited for Jeff to wake up before trying it. It tasted absolutely gorgeous, I mean, really, really amazing! We thought they would taste ‘OK’, but they were really moist, there wasn’t too much pastry (I’d certainly recommend you buy the ready-rolled stuff) and we were really impressed – so impressed that we are going to make them again on Wednesday and take them to Northumberland for Jeff’s parents.

We watched some more Barefoot Contessa episodes and then I started getting a bit restless so Jeff suggested we go to a pub. I thought this was a fantastic idea so agreed, and suggested we get some bread to feed the ducks – thankfully Jeff knew a pub besides a river, so we combined both activities. After driving to the pub, we decided to feed the ducks first, in case it got dark quickly and it didn’t take us too long to find some – and some gorgeous ducklings! The ducklings moved incredibly fast and it was really cute to watch them ‘run’ in the water, after the bread (at this point I would like to state that we fed them with BROWN bread, as apparently white bread is bad for them?). We even had two ducks get out of the water and follow us along the path – It was as though Jeff was the ‘pied piper’ and was throwing breadcrumbs behind him so that the ducks would continue waddling after us.

It wasn’t a long walk as the path led to a main road and we couldn’t continue walking alongside the river, however it was long enough to enjoy it and we headed back to the pub where Jeff got a ‘Stronginthearmn’ and I got a pint of Scrumpy. We then sat outside, by the river and chatted, which was really nice.

I certainly felt tipsy when going back home, however I don’t think Jeff did. After getting in we decided to cook as it was already 8:00PM and so set about cutting up the vegetables and began preparing the fish. Now this was interesting as neither of us had gutted a fish before and had NO idea how to do it – What to do? Youtube it! You’d be amazed what you can actually find on Youtube and it literally took two seconds to type in ‘How to gut a Sea Bass’ to find a really comprehensive video on what to do. Cut off fins – right, slit it along the stomach – right, cut by the gills – Ok.... I decided in my half-inebriated state, that I wanted to do this, after all, if I’m eating the fish then I guess it’s a good idea to actually know how to prepare it?

It certainly wasn’t an overly pleasant thing to do, however I am very glad I did it – I certainly learned something yesterday, that’s for sure! We both agreed that in future, we would just get fillets, easier and far, far less messy! We wrapped the fish in the prosciutto after rubbing it with oil, salt and pepper and popped it in the oven. We then made the rosemary and lemon sauce which would have turned out well, had I not added lemon juice to the very hot butter – the ENTIRE thing exploded on the hob – Whoops.... This is why I find it very hard to consider myself even remotely intelligent as I had no idea that that would happen and it is apparently a very basic cooking concept – never add cold things to very hot things. Ahh well, least neither of us died or got burnt (badly).

The meal actually turned out really, really well and Jeff and I are certainly going to try it again. We seem to be doing very well on cooking and I know that when we go to Northumberland we are planning on cooking a lot of other things....

... 3 days and counting, can’t wait!

- Molly

Looking forward to another fun weekend

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

Farmers Markets, BBQ's and gardening! (by Jeff)

Sadly Molly is correct - it's late on a Sunday evening and I'm already missing her. It's going to be a big issue because I'm not going to see her for such a long time - longer than it's been since we last got in contact, and I can't say I like that thought at all!

But still, I digress, so I shall continue to sip my wine and fill you in on the details of our Sunday, which had me more relaxed than our trip to the spa!

When Molly says early, she meant at 8:30am (which isn't normally early) but on a Sunday!? Suffice to say that I'm glad that getting up had a purpose, that's for sure.

And what did we get up early for? Well, none other than a trip to a farmer's market in Winchester, a place I really like as I used to live there many years ago, so know it reasonably well. Added to that, I also really like farmer's markets - as you may have gathered from our blog, we do tend to do a lot of cooking, eating and messing around in the garden (which sounds oh so domesticated!) which means that an open air market filled with good ingredients, good food and plants and things is a perfect match.

But first thing's first - breakfast. We headed to Winchester, parked the car in the multi-storey car park, and headed up the high street to the Starbucks branch where we elected to partake in hazelnut hot chocolate (me) and a small tea (Molly), along with a couple of portions of fruit toast, which is one of Molly's favourites that I have definitely gained a liking for.

After tiding away a nice breakfast, we had a wander around the various stalls and stands selling organic produce of all kinds - lots of meat (everything from beef to venison to wild boar to partridge to pheasant to crabs and beyond!), lots of organic veg and lots of very lovely breads and cheeses! Some of this, of course, both me and Molly bought in abundance - I now have two joints of meat (one beef brisket and one haunch of venison) to slow cook in the coming few days, which no doubt will be absolutely fantastic (your dishes are only as good as their ingredients, after all), a particularly nice local cheese and lots of other bits and pieces too. Oh, and while there, there just happened to be a stand that sold hog roast in bread rolls... which I'm not sure about you, but I find incredibly difficult to pass on.

While hopping between the stalls in the market, there was a shop in Winchester where we nipped into and found a hanging basket case, some seeds and some plant food, as well as some cheap gardening gloves and tools. Given the price of it all, we grabbed a load of it and continued our meandering through the market.

All in all, a very successful time was had at the farmer's market - if you're local to the Hampshire area, I'd strongly suggest having a wander over to a local market near you when the dates are on. You can check them at http://www.hampshirefarmersmarkets.co.uk/.

On the drive back home from the market, the car loaded with goodies, we decided that the weather wasn't looking that sunny - contrary to what the weather forecast said - and so instead of visiting a National Trust (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk) property which had very recently opened for spring, so figured we'd call in at the garden centre, get the rest of the bits and pieces we'd need to plant up our recent acquisitions then head home, make some lunch and just have a relaxing afternoon.

We got back and immediately lept into the garden and started planting things - the hanging basket is now up and has seeds ready to grow, there's also two new climbing rose plants against the fence and another rose bush in a put between them - my garden is certainly beginning to look like it has been touched with green fingers (Molly's, obviously, as I'm not really that good at growing plants!).

During this time potting up the plants, which included Nasturtium, Lobelias and the aforementioned roses, the weather appeared to take a turn for the better and the sun burnt all the cloud and fog away. Before we knew it, it was a glorious Sunday afternoon, and I suggested that instead of cooking lunch in the kitchen, we might as well do it outside in the garden on the barbeque. Molly agreed and she set about preparing a salad while I got it all up to temperature and oiled up the grill.

And so, cooking on the barbeque we had venison burgers recently acquired from the farmer's market in the morning, as well as some seasoned and marinated pork kebabs that I had purchased from a farm shop on Friday - combined with the salad that Molly made, and some of the specialist breads also from the farmer's market, it made for a delicious - and very filling - lunch indeed, so much so that I'm only really slightly peckish some 11 hours later!

Still, the time was by now moving on, and it would be soon that Molly would have to go home to sort out all her things for work tomorrow... but not before we spent some time in the kitchen baking a large batch of fairy cakes for her work colleagues!

It was absolutely lovely to spend pretty much the entire weekend with Molly... certainly it's something that I don't take for granted even though I'm occasionally very capable of being more than a little insensitive and not making her aware of how I feel about her. She is, as I have always known, a stunningly beautiful and gorgeous woman and I feel so lucky that I've been given a second chance with her.

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the gushy stuff. But suffice to say that I've enjoyed this weekend because of the woman I've spent it with more than the things that we've been doing. It's going to be a tough time while Molly is away!

 

 

-Jeff

Meatballs, flowers and peas

So, the big news this week is that Jeff has officially resigned! He’s spent over 6 years in his current job and will finally be able to (hopefully) work with nice people and not very ineffective management. He’ll also be on ‘normal’ 9-5 days, 5 days a week, as opposed to a 4 day-day shift, and a 4-day night shift..  His last day will be in a few weeks, just before we go to visit his parents in Northumberland!

Friday couldn’t come soon enough and as soon as my working day was over I headed over to Jeff’s and found him out in the garden, cleaning his gas BBQ in preparation for the summer. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this week, hitting highs of 18 degrees (hell, that’s quite hot for the UK at this time of the year) and as well as Jeff looking very attractive as ever, his garden was also looking really nice – his tree, that all the birds sit on, is in full bloom and our sweet peas and tulips seem to be doing incredibly well, as well – I’m terrified that the slugs are going to come and eat the peas, but so far, so good. Also, the cherry tree that Jeff bought last week seems to be doing incredibly well – that is to say, the thing hasn’t died yet which I consider a good thing :-)

I wrote a blog last weekend – less than a week ago, saying that we had bought some more seeds (tomato, pepper and radish) and had planted them in pots, in compost, outside. Well, in less than a week we already have tomato plants! We can see two of them already so I imagine it won’t be long before we see more and will prick them out and stick them in bigger pots in a few weeks and then stick them outside.

We decided after our success with Ina Garten’s chicken chilli recipe, that we’d try another one that we saw on one of her TV shows and tonight we tried her ‘real meatballs and pasta’ recipe – the only changes we made were to use venison mince instead of veal, use wholewheat pasta instead of white and not add any salt (as good a cook as Ina seems to be, we are slightly taken aback at how much salt she uses in things… ).

The entire cooking process really didn’t take much time at all – rather than fry the meatballs in oil, we grilled them, making them more healthy – we still popped them in the tomato sauce and let the cook through for quite a long time, and we still used Parmesan, not just for the taste, but because we thought it would look nice when we took a photograph :-) The verdict? Absolutely bloody lovely, however we thought the sauce was ever-so-slightly bland, so we’re thinking of chopping up some basil and sticking it in the sauce or adding some pepper – we’re still going to be resisting sticking shedloads of salt into our food, but each to their own!

After dinner, Jeff and I decamped to Jeff’s lounge, where we went straight for his Sky plus box and watched more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ so we could try and find a new recipe to cook. I think we have decided to do Ina’s ‘Mustard fish’ which looks quite healthy and will be made healthier by 1) not adding any salt and 2) not adding as much butter – stay tuned for how this one turns out!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the ‘surprise weekend’, where Jeff has no idea what I have got planned…. As he hasn’t written a blog for a while, he’s promised to update our blog and write about our weekend together, so I am sure it will be a literary masterpiece and well written as always! I’m really excited about this weekend – the main reason is that I find it really hard to keep secrets and so far, Jeff really doesn’t know what he’s going to be doing! (Unlike the Amsterdam holiday we had a few months ago and I managed to blurt it out a couple of weeks before we went, whoops!)

So, roll on the weekend!

- Molly

Gardening, Classical music and wine!

Wow. What an absolutely brilliant weekend! It started off well when Jeff came to my house to have breakfast, well ‘brunch’ I guess if you eat food at about 10:30am? I made him an omelette with sausages that his parents had bought for him when they visited a few weeks ago along with mushrooms, onions and cheese. He seemed to rather like it, so I’d say that was successful. Jeff reacquainted himself with my cat and kept the cat occupied whilst I cooked (which I appreciate as my cat is evil and incredibly attention seeking).

After breakfast we headed off to Jeff’s house so I could dump my car. I hopped into Jeff’s car and we headed off to a local farm shop so we could get something for lunch – on the way, I decided that I needed some more wine for my wine rack (I hate it having gaps) so Jeff and I popped into the absolutely wonderful wine warehouse where they have 40% off ‘bin end’ wine – 40% off is great, but it’s a bit of a moot point when the wine can still be over £100 for a half bottle. We managed to pick out some really nice Riesling and hopped into the car and continued our journey to the farm shop.

We managed to find some lovely chicken breasts for our lunch – sesame chicken salad and stopped in on a supermarket on the way back to get some salad bags and other salad stuff. I suggested to Jeff that we actually spend a few hours going to a National Trust property and he was up for the idea, however when we got back home we actually decided it was probably best just to potter around the house, especially as we were going to London later for ‘Classical Spectacular’. Another thing we bought at the supermarket was more things to grow and some more pots. This time we bought pepper seeds, cheery tomato seeds and radishes. I’m not overly keen on the radish idea, but Jeff said that his parents grew them and apparently they’re very easy to do - .e.g just stick the seeds in the ground and forget about them, so why not?

Back at Jeff’s house we made lunch and watched some more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite programs. Unfortunately Ina Garten didn’t do anything overly healthy this time around, so after watching the program we deleted it and then set to work on potting all the seeds. Once done, I suggested we go to another garden center and get even MORE things to grow and Jeff was up for the idea. What I didn’t realise was, Jeff was so up for the idea we actually came away from the garden center with a cherry tree, a David Austin Rose called ‘Alnwick’ which was particularly poignant as Jeff was born near there and some gladioli. Jeff also bought two massive pots so that both the rose and the cherry tree could grow without needing to be re-potted for a few years.

We got back and set to work straight away potting things up and before long we had to stop, as we needed to get going to London. After changing clothes and the washing of hands, Jeff and I set out to the train station and hot-footed it to Knightsbridge tube station, only hesitating at the Starbucks in Waterloo to grab a couple of slices of fruit bread and some small hazelnut hot chocolates. We made it to the Royal Albert Hall JUST in time – I admit, I was quite stressed as I hate being late to anything. Jeff as always, was laid back and kept telling me to chill out, but as anyone who is a bit of a control freak knows – that’s easier said than done. We took our seats with 5 minutes to spare, and had the most amazing 2.5 hours just sitting there, listening to amazing classical pieces. The conductor, John Rigby, who I had seen before, was as always, mad as a box of frogs but in a good way. His jokes were exceptionally cheesy but I think that’s a good thing as it got the audience involved.

The pieces that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played were:
Nessun Dorma
Rule, Britannia
Land of Hope and Glory
1812 Overture
BIZET - Pearl Fishers Duet
HOLST - Mars The Planets
SOUSA - Liberty Bell March
HANDEL - Hallelujah Chorus
GOUNOD - Soldier's Chorus Faust
VERDI - Prelude to Act I La Traviata
STRAUSS - Also Sprach Zarathustra
RAVEL - Bolero
STRAUSS - Radetsky March
DENZA - Funiculi, Funicula
STRAUSS - Blue Danube Waltz
MUSSORGSKY - Great Gate At Kiev
BIZET - Toreador's Song Carmen
SAINT-SAENS - Finale Organ Symphony

I knew most of them, except for the ‘Slave’s Chorus’ by Handel and the Great Gate at Kiev so it was nice to listen to some new classical pieces. The Dudes who sang were utterly amazing – especially Kevin Greenlaw who looked very dashing, dressed up in a Union Jack flag for the ‘Rule Britannia’ encore. However Philip O’Brian, who was the stand in for Wynne Evans was also very, very impressive. The concert finished by having loads of balloons descend from the air and people popping them (which apparently is supposed to signify cannons?) It was a fantastic night and the Royal Albert Hall was packed with a lot of flag waving people.

We managed to get back just after midnight and both of us were totally knackered – so much so, that Jeff actually decided to call in sick as he was supposed to be working on Sunday at 7:00am. I know, not overly great in terms of work ethic – however, Jeff got some good news on Thursday and will be handing in his resignation next week, therefore hopefully he will be a lot less stressed and not working with a bunch of cretins.

We’re off to a Spa on Tuesday – Jeff’s first time, so that should be interesting and then, it’s the ‘mystery weekend’ where Jeff has no idea what we’re doing and I have planned everything…. I won’t reveal anything here as I know Jeff reads the blog, so I guess I’ll have to fill everyone in after the weekend!


-Molly