Birthday!
Finally I have found the time to do a blog post. Normally, this is Molly's domain - she's a much better writer than me, I find, and this kind of thing takes me a lot longer to do. However, I shall try my best. If you get bored at least there are some pictures!
The morning came and I awoke after a surprisingly pleasant night's sleep - but up I had to get as I had a busy day ahead of me, as Molly was coming over after work, and I had volunteered to find the centre piece of my birthday meal - Vension steak.
After trying our usual farm shop and finding it closed (on Mondays! Who knew?) I tried another butcher, who recommended another farm shop, and when I went there they cut some steaks freshly for me.
The recipe had said that I needed to get ones that were thick, so I got them about an inch thick... which is quite a good deal thicker than I was expecting, but as it happened we ended up with a kilogram of venison meat for less than a tenner - not bad value really, especially as it was very tender and very fresh.
On arriving back home, I noticed that my travels around the local area had taken up the vast majority of the afternoon and I only had a few minutes before Molly arrived after her day at work, so set about tidying and making the house sensible (not too lived in, if you know what I mean).
A knock at the door. There she was, somewhat radiant and glowing with a massive grin on her face - certainly something I always enjoy seeing - complete with a big bag of presents!
Excited? Me? Yes, I was. But my excitement pales into insignificance versus the excitement of Molly when she's buying presents for or giving presents out to other people, and this time I was on the receiving end.
As well as a very, very cool personalised moonpig card, I received The Jeremy Clarkson collection on DVD (cool), two low fat GoodFood recipe books (brilliant!), the Collins book fo British Birds (to help us identifying the birdies in the garden), a spanner keyring, a Haynes manual-style VW Golf GTi mug (I'm a VW fan, and the mug is awesome), a lovely new ProCook cook's knife, very sharp, and the best of all a mini single-egg non-stick frying pan, which is the most awesome and cute looking pan I've ever seen. Excellent!
Certainly a very good haul, and I thanked Molly for all her effort with wrapping and buying the presents.
And so to the kitchen to prepare our meal. Molly had discovered a particularly nice fruity gravy (it probably had a posh name, but that's what I think of it as) complete with blackberries, and so while the venison steaks were in the pan being lightly fried, we set about making that and cooking asparagus, cauliflower and broccoli.
The meal was incredibly delicious and the venison so tender - one of the things that I have found that since we've found each other again, the amount of cooking we're doing has really blown me away. I love cooking with Mol, and while we've had successes and failures, we always enjoy the process, as well as the results (when they turn out well!).
Following our meal, we decided it would be a good thing to have a nice relaxing evening, so kicked back and watched some particularly awful TV (as I understand it, we were watching The Biggest Loser USA - Molly has a er, fascination of watching what I deem to be "chav TV", but I don't mind really, it beats soap operas). Sadly Molly had to go home before work the next day, so as she headed off into the night I was very sad to see her go, but at the same time wondering just when my next fried egg was going to be so I could use the incredibly cool mini-pan she'd bought me.
-Jeff
