Chicken Chilli

Wow! What a very cool night and quite frankly, it was well deserved after a very, very long week!

I popped round to Jeff’s after work and he had put the tulips and the sweet peas out so they could get some sun. I remembered to take a photograph so as you can see, they have grown quite a lot in the last 6 weeks! Whilst it seems to be below freezing tonight, hopefully we will put them out during the days and they’ll get enough light to carry on growing and soon we should see some flowers :-)

Another amusing thing is that the birds in Jeff’s garden seem to have gone through nearly BOTH bags of bird seed that he bought 2 months ago – that’s 30Kg of birdseed in 3 months! They are some greedy birds, although I guess it’s a good thing that we’re helping to keep the Robins, Thrushes Sparrows, Blackbirds, Magpies, Wood pigeons, Green finches, Coal tits and Blue tits in food!

So, after the birds were fed, we headed out to the supermarket to get all the ingredients necessary for Iva Garten’s ‘Chicken Chilli’ – the recipe we saw on her television program a couple of days ago. Whilst we did record it on Jeff’s Skyplus box, I managed to find the recipe online, therefore we didn’t need to re-watch the program for yet another time, hurrah! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chicken-chili-recipe/index.html We roasted the chicken breasts in the oven and chopped up all the vegetables and off we went. I have to say, it was a pretty easy recipe to follow and soon the kitchen was smelling of chicken chilli.

We had bought some nachos, sour cream, cheese and salsa and popped it all on a plate – result! It was absolutely gorgeous and just the right amount of chilli (Jeff can handle much hotter dishes than me, so I was the one who thought it was perfect).

We ate food and then watched some more random TV – tonight was ‘Miami Ink’ which I’m rather enjoying at the moment, especially as I want to get another tattoo this year, however am waiting until I’ve lost a little bit more weight as apparently if you want a tattoo on your thigh, it’s best to wait until you’ve got the shape you want. Soon, though, I hope, I’ll get a peacock feather tattoo! We also watched some more Iva Garten after our success of following her recipe and found a rather nice rosemary and garlic rub for lamb.

I’m writing this at home, with my cat on my lap, having driven back from Jeff’s house – We’re spending the whole of tomorrow together, I’m cooking breakfast for him at my house and then we’re chilling before heading off into London to the classical music concert. Roll on the fun weekend!

-Molly

Sour Sweets, American cookery and foot massages

I was hoping to post this blog update in a happy mood, after all, we have peas! Yes, that’s right, the sweet peas that Jeff and I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted and they’re not about 2 inches tall – this has all happened in the last 5-6 days as when I checked last week, there was nothing to be seen.

So why not the happy mood? As I just found out I failed my ITIL exam by one mark, ONE mark! Talk about being gutted. I don’t usually fail at things so I guess this is a chance to deal with it and try again – Jeff has been very supportive, however I won’t deny I have an overwhelming desire to say ‘I told you so’ as I really did think I failed it. It’s not the end of the world, I know – however it’s never nice to be told you didn’t pass.

It’s a bit of a downer after the lovely night we had last night as well – I popped over to Jeff’s house after work, however he wasn’t back yet as he had been delayed getting some tryres for his car. This wasn’t an issue, so I made sure all the bird feeders were topped up and was quite happy to see that the tree he has out the back, is flowering – I’ll try and take a photograph of it at the weekend, it looks really pretty and I imagine the birds are happy as they have some extra cover for when they hop onto the bird feeders to scoff all the seed!

I also checked on the tulips and the sweet peas and the tulips have grown loads (again, I’ll try and take a photograph at the weekend) I’d say some of the tulips were about 3 inches in length so we obviously bought good ones back from Amsterdam. I can’t wait to see if all the colours were correct and we do actually have some blue and black ones. I suggested to Jeff that we now start leaving them outside during the day as they are currently still in his garage and really need natural light if they’re to grow big and strong!

When Jeff got back we went shopping for bits and bobs as we were cooking something new that night – ‘Lemon cod with basil bean mash’ http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/7189/lemon-cod-with-basil-bean-mash I know, ‘What the hell is basil bean mash?’ We had no idea, and trying to find frozen soya beans in the supermarket proved a bit of a pain as well! We (and by that, I mean ‘I’)- also bought some sour sweets as I had a real craving for them. Jeff has a very odd reaction to sour sweets and finds them really hard to eat, which I, of course, find really hilarious. He had one as he was a good sport, but declined any more. If you haven’t had any, I’d urge you to try and find them – they’re really morish!

With the sour sweets and dinner purchased, we headed back home and started cooking – Considering we both thought the basil bean mash would be absolutely vile, we were pleasantly surprised – it was certainly edible, so much so that we didn’t actually use the sweet potato we had bought as ‘backup’. That being said, Jeff thought it was lacking in flavour, so I think if we decide to do it again, we’ll put in more garlic or another flavour to make it more interesting.

Jeff and I then watched some TV – tonight we decided to shy away from our usual repertoire of ‘The Biggest Loser USA’ and ‘Embarrassing bodies’ and actually watch some cooking programs. Oh Dear God – ‘The Barefoot Contessa’ Ina Garten. I’d never even heard of her until last night and we watched a couple of her shows. How much fat is in each recipe? I don’t deny certain things of hers look interesting and she seems a very friendly woman, almost like an American Nigella Lawson, but if you ate all the stuff she cooked, you’d not be able to get through doors unless you turned sideways. That being said, we were lucky enough to catch a show where she did a low fat ‘chicken chilli’ – something you don’t really hear about in England, so Jeff and I recorded her program on his Sky plus and we’re going to try and recreate it on Friday night. Neither of us have ever tried to cook a recipe from the TV before... so it could be ‘interesting’....

After that, I asked Jeff to rub my arms as they were really hurting from the Personal Training session I had in the gym on Monday night. Jeff is a fantastic masseur and whilst he really helps me, I always feel guilty as he’s not really the type who likes being massaged. However, he did agree to let me rub his feet – which was quite funny as I really don’t mind feet in general (I know some people are really squeamish about them) so I managed to get him to let me rub various creams and things into his feet for about 15 minutes whilst pulling stupid faces. He did say it felt nice and I’m hoping it helps – I find most guys don’t tend to care as much about hard skin or nice cuticles as women, although maybe that’s just a false stereotype...

After that, it was time to head off home – this weekend should be really great as we’re heading to London to listen to a classical music concert in the evening. I think our plan is to head to London early afternoon so we can spend a good few hours ‘exploring’ and grab some food.

-Molly

Frustrating Friday night

Since Jeff and I got back in contact, I think Friday night was the first night that we felt a bit deflated and didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Usually we have a plan (and when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me’ and Jeff tends to just go along with it) of what we’re going to do, however on Friday I had a Doctors appointment so left work early and managed to get to Jeff’s by 5:00pm which was great, but after 30 minutes or so, we didn’t really have any ideas as to what we could get up to for the next few hours – unfortunately the reason I went to the Doctors meant we couldn’t get up to anything ‘fun’ and as it had started getting dark, the options open to us were less.

We watched some random TV, however there’s only so many diet programs and shock documentaries you can watch without getting bored so after watching 15 minutes of ‘Sex: How to do everything’ and getting very pissed off with the inequality of the program (full frontal nudity on the woman… why not the same on the guy? How is that fair?) I suggested to Jeff that we stop watching TV and do something else.

Jeff showed me how to play ‘Battlefield 2’ for a while, which was quite good fun, however I got a bit annoyed that I kept dying, plus it seemed to take quite  along time to respawn so I decided it was time to quit. After that, we decided we would order Waggamamas takeaway, however order it online – something neither of us had done before. Jeff was sceptical that it wouldn’t work, however decided to give it a try (which reminds me, it’s my turn to pay for dinner next!).

I then suggested we sort out Jeff’s cupboards – Yeah, I know, who said romance was dead? Thing is, as Jeff and I are doing loads of cooking recently, it would be good to know what he already had and what we needed to buy as he currently has, like, 4 bags of plain flour and 5 bottles of vanilla essence as they’re all hidden around the place on different shelves. I enjoy tidying / sorting things out, so was happy to help Jeff – one thing that I didn’t count on was feeling a bit ‘weird’ when I took down things that I knew his ex used, or things that I knew Jeff had used to cook with her – obviously that’s noone’s ‘fault’ and I didn’t tell Jeff at the time as he’d probably say I was ‘worrying about nothing’, but I guess it was just another reminder that after we split up, he didn’t stay single for very long at all – Still, one of my own insecurities I need to deal with.

After sorting everything out, throwing away out of date things and sticking two bags of rubbish in the bin, Jeff suggested we make some more cupcakes. So we did! However, we made lots of different types, so along with the normal raisin ones, we made some cranberry and hazelnut cakes, some almond ones with flaked almonds on top, some ginger ones with ground and stem ginger and… a gay cupcake. Yes, that’s right – we made a gay cupcake. ‘How do you make one of those?’ I hear you ask… Well, one of Jeff’s friends has a nickname of ‘Gayboy’ (even though he’s apparently heterosexual) therefore Jeff and his friends take the mick out of him quite regularly. So, we decorated a cupcake in pretty pink and purple glittery food colour and chocolate stars. Jeff said he’d see the funny side to it as it certainly wasn’t meant to be offensive.

We then popped out, got food and stuffed ourselves stupid with the Waggamama’s chilli squid, amai udon and ginger chicken udon (oh yes, and some duck gyoza which Jeff rather likes).

It was then time to head home, so I said goodbye and drove off – Sadly I won’t be seeing Jeff again until Wednesday, when hopefully neither of us will be restless and we’ll have something exciting to report!

-Molly

Just a quick one

One of the first blogs without any photos!

Unfortunately this week I am really busy revising for my ‘ITIL’ exam (Which is this week – argh! Scary!) so Jeff and I can’t really see each other a lot. That being said, last night worked out very well as Jeff was working on a day shift so I went round to his house after work, cooked some easy spaghetti bolognaise and plonked myself at his table for a couple of hours, did some more revision and waited for him to get in. If anyone knows about ‘ITIL’ they’ll know how boring it is and also, how hard it is to find decent past exam papers on the internet. They’re either sites you have to pay money for, or they’re sites which assume you’re stupid and urge you to download a .pdf.vba file – yeah, right...

Jeff came home at 7:45pm and we ate, chatted for a bit and he was kind enough to rub my shoulders before I had to leave and go home. I think we’ll both be glad when the week is over, although Jeff has a LAN party at the weekend which I know he is looking forward to going to.

If anyone is interested in the tulips – they’re doing really well, which is more than can be said for the sweet peas, we can’t see any sprouting at all! However, the tulips are at least 1 inch high and growing daily so fingers crossed we can put them outside soon and they won’t get bitten by frost.

It’s such a lovely day this morning and I can’t wait for us to spend loads of time together over Easter and surprise Jeff with all the things I have planned in a couple of weeks time!

Grabbing a few hours on Saturday night

Although Jeff was working on Saturday, I popped over to his house at 5:30pm so I could pop his slow cooker on and cook the pork shoulder that we bought at Winchester Farmers market a few weeks ago. As per usual, I don’t like the idea of Jeff not having anything nice to eat whilst he’s at work and whilst he is more than capable of buying stuff at work or cooking something himself, I enjoy cooking, so set about making him a healthy ‘toad in the hole’ where I stuck a couple of tablespoons of wholegrain real ale mustard into the batter before cooking it in the oven.

As soon as I arrived I also filled up the 5 bird feeders that Jeff currently has hanging from his bird tree in the garden – The birds are going through a hell of a lot of seed at the moment and Jeff is already on the 2nd 15Kg bad that we bought less than a couple of months ago.

After cooking the Toad in the hole and putting the slow cooker on, I started watching some of the programs that Jeff and I had set to record on his Sky plus box. ‘Bridalplasty’ – seriously, the worst reality TV show I have ever watched in my life…. Ever. If you’ve never seen it, then thank God you’ve not wasted an hour, or more of your life watching incredibly shallow and bitchy women compete over tasks to be ‘top bride’ to win various plastic surgeries. I guess I could kind of understand it if the women on the program are really overweight Mingers, but they’re not! They’re all very slim, very attractive women and for women like that to want to compete for various nose jobs, boob jobs etc – Crikey.. it was certainly an eye opener.

As much as I wanted to sit down for an hour and feel my brain turn to pulp, I started getting restless after about 30 minutes (I guess even I have a limit as to how much rubbish TV I can watch) so I decided to make some fairy cakes – Jeff had all the necessary ingredients in his cupboard so I found a recipe online and made 24 little cakes. A bit of a twist on the normal recipe as I used custard powder as well - http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1864/glamorous-fairy-cakes

Jeff opened the door at about 7:45pm – we had a chat, settled down to watch some more crappy TV (‘Embarrassing bodies’ and ‘Beauty and the Best – the ugly face of prejudice’) and drank a bottle of very nice 2006 Riesling that I bought from a wine warehouse just before Christmas. The pork wasn’t quite ready so we didn’t eat until about 8:30pm, however when we did, it was gorgeous – we had it with red cabbage and carrot and potato mash (I’d slow cooked the pork on a bed of shallots and carrots).

In a couple of weeks, Jeff and I are off to a Spa – we’re both taking a day off work and I’m taking him to the Spa I usually go to which will be quite nice. I’ve also got a very cool ‘surprise’ weekend planned for him on the 26th / 27th March (I’m sure he’ll write a Blog about it) So… stay tuned for Blogs about something other than cooking!

Juicy Lucy, anyone?

It’s been a weird start to the week as both Jeff and I have been really busy, so we haven’t really contacted each other much. Jeff had to text me yesterday to see whether or not I was still staying at his last night! I replied that I was and Jeff was kind enough to go out shopping for all the bits and bobs we needed for cooking as he’s not at work until tomorrow.

I arrived around his house at 5:15pm and Jeff made me a cup of tea (Teapigs tea! We bought this at a farm shop at the weekend and it’s actually very nice) and we had a bit of a catch up and a natter in the kitchen. Currently Jeff is looking for another job and will hopefully be changing soon – this means he’ll no longer be on shifts and will be working a more normal 9-5, Monday-Friday type job. Good in one way as he won’t be working with such cretins (his words) however it does mean he won’t get as much time off, which I know he likes as he enjoys doing stuff to his car and generally chilling. I, on the other hand, was ranting about one of my work colleagues who is a friend and who I also manage (tricky situation, I know – I only started managing them a few months ago, they’ve been my friend for while) this ‘friend / work colleague’ is having some problems with their ex and have been moaning, moaning, moaning about it to me. Whilst I appreciate it’s a horrible situation, you know where you get to the point of saying ‘I JUST DON’T CARE’? Especially when they are so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t bother stopping and asking, ‘So, how are YOU?’ it’s all about them? Poor Jeff listened to my ranting with a bemused look on his face for ages before I decided I had better shut up as I didn’t want to turn into my friend!

We started cooking straight away and switched on Jeff’s slow cooker – we had decided we were going to glaze the smoked gammon joint (the one we bought at the Farmers market on Sunday, after Jeff met my Mum) with honey and stick some water in the bottom with mustard. Why? As it seemed like a good idea. What wasn’t a good idea, and what I didn’t realise until we had cooked it for 3 hours was, you were supposed to leave the string around the meat alone as it’s a ‘cooking aid’ – no one has ever told me this before, so there I was, merrily cutting away the string before plonking it into the slow cooker – the whole blinking thing fell apart so when we took it out, it looked a bit sad! Still, it tasted absolutely gorgeous, We tried to eat as much as possible but I had to admit defeat so Jeff has quite a large chunk of the stuff left at his house, which I am sure he will devour today :-)

We also decided to cook a new pudding – ‘Juicy Lucy’  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1037/juicy-lucy-pudding which was another recipe off the BBC Good food website. Jeff, being pretty proactive, had already got the frozen berries out and had got the correct blueberry jam (after mistakenly buying a cherry one earlier in the day). We peeled and cored all the pears, stuck the correct amount of sugar in and stuck it in the oven. It actually took longer to make the pears juicy than the time it said on the recipe (we’re finding this a lot – that it takes longer to cook than stated and I don’t think it’s Jeff’s oven as he has a normal fan assisted one) Anyway, after an hour, we poured the fresh breadcrumbs mixed with butter onto the pudding, stuck it back in the oven and 15 minutes later it was ready. We were really impressed as for the first time, it looked EXACTLY like the recipe and it tasted bloody great! The only thing we think we would do differently next time is actually make more breadcrumbs (which we did in Jeff’s new food processor) – however we do appreciate that the pudding will be slightly less low fat than if we stuck strictly to the recipe. Either way – we have decided that this is the pudding we are going to be cooking for Jeff’s parents when we go and visit them at Easter.

Next, we decided we would try the toffee puddings again as they didn’t turn out completely right before – Jeff had bought some caramel sauce and we added this due to the puddings not really tasting very toffee like, last time. Did they work this time? Well, yes and no – we tried one with a very runny consistency and even after an hour the thing wasn’t cooked. However the one we added some baking powder to, and an extra egg white was cooked and it tasted ‘OK’ but just nothing amazing so I think we’re going to call that one a part success in the sense that we didn’t kill ourselves, nor throw up, however I don’t think we’ll be doing that recipe again.

We also checked on our tulips and sweet peas that we had sewn in the pots a few weeks ago. The tulips are doing really, really well and you can see that most of them are coming up nicely and there’s a good 2-3 cm tip out of the soil. Unfortunately we can’t see any movement from the peas, which we are hoping is normal and that in a few weeks when it gets a bit warmer, they’ll start to sprout. We watered them a little bit more and left them to it.

After watching some of our ‘normal’ TV programs (I’m not entirely convinced anyone could call the type of TV we watch, normal) I suggested we go out for a drive as I was feeling a bit restless so at 9:30pm Jeff and I went for a small drive around where he lived which was nice. Then we came back, had a shower and went to bed as I am working today.

I’m next seeing Jeff on Saturday where I think we’ll just have a quiet night as he’s working on Saturday and Sunday so I’ll pop over just before he gets back home and start dinner. I know it might seem like currently our lives / relationship revolves around cooking low fat food and visiting farmers markets, however, hopefully in the summer I’ll be able to post about all the other things we are doing – such as visiting a lot of National Trust properties, going to loads of classical concerts and basically not being stuck in the house due to dark nights and horrible weather!

-Molly

Jeff meets my Mum!

Today was quite a monumental day in some ways – Even though Jeff and I were together for 3.5 years, he had never met my parents (various reasons) and after we got back in contact last November he said it was the one thing he was most hurt over – So… if we are to have any chance of making this work, we both need to change certain things that we did last time and in my case, this means being more open with Jeff and integrating him into my life more. I stayed over Jeff’s house last night (Saturday) and we were going to cook something easy, however I suggested wandering into town and going to Waggamamas – Jeff thought this was an excellent idea and we left straight away. Waggamamas as per usual was excellent and even though it was a Saturday night the service was pretty snappy. I had my usual ‘amai udon’ with wholewheat noodles and chilli squid, however Jeff tried a chicken chilli mein which he said grew on him, along with some gyoza – yummy!

We got back, watched more random TV that I had recorded on Jeff’s sky plus box and had a relatively early night – come 7:30am the next morning I was already awake, so woke Jeff up and we toddled off to a Starbucks half way between where my Mum was and Jeff’s house. Hmmm, Starbucks fruit bread is divine! I’m currently rather obsessed with the stuff and Jeff seems to be quite sold on it as well. We then headed over to meet my Mum at 10:00am which seemed to go well. It was only a quick meeting as my Mum was actually working, but she said Jeff seemed ‘awfully polite’ which can’t be a bad thing!

As it was still quite early, Jeff and I decided to drive back and found a small farmers market in the middle of one of the towns – we only bought a few things, but it was nice to get out of the car and explore another fun market.

We decided we were going to bake something else (we still need to try and think of a desert to cook for Jeff’s parents when we visit them at Easter) so I looked up recipe’s on the BBC good food website whilst Jeff drove back home. We decided on ‘sticky toffee pudding’ a low fat version, of course and got all the necessary ingredients in Tesco’s

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3070/guiltfree-sticky-toffee-puds

It took absolutely AGES to find the maple syrup, you’d think it would be in the same isle as the jams and golden syrup wouldn’t you?  But nope, it’s actually in the ‘Long life milk’ section – God knows why, most strange.

With everything bought, we headed back home and chilled for a couple of hours – we were just about to start baking when we realised that the recipe called for a food processing – something that Jeff doesn’t own so off we went in the car again to Argos to buy a food processor. After the success I have had with my slow cooked recipes, Jeff decided to also buy a relatively cheap slow cooker so that should keep us busy for a few months! It was torrential rain so we literally ran back to the car and I sat with both big boxes on my lap as Jeff drove home.

We started cooking straight away and it was a pretty simple recipe to do, however the consistency of the mixture looked really runny, therefore I decided to put some extra flour in it. It did take a rather long time to cook in the oven and we had to check it 3 times to make sure it was cooked properly – result? Nice, however it didn’t really taste of toffee and it was rather heavy. Jeff and I managed to polish one off each, so yeah, not a total disaster! We’re going to try and make them again with less flour and try and make them taste more like toffee – Second attempt will be on Wednesday when we also slow cook the gammon joint we bought from the Farmers market today :-)

As usual it was a lovely day spent with Jeff and it’s a shame we can’t win the lottery and do this kind of thing all the time. Sadly ‘real life’ beckons us, so until Jeff or I pick the winning numbers we’ll just have to continue as we are – can’t complain though, 2011 seems to be a much better year than 2010!

- Molly