BBC Good Food show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Molly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Molly

Our new pet!

Firstly - Jeff and I have started a new blog

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

Yes, we're hatching chickens! (well, trying to) and we're hoping to start this Sunday - I was hoping my incubator would have arrived today, but sadly there was no missed delivery notice by the Postman when I got home. Bummer! As the eggs should arrive tomorrow, I'm really hoping that the incubator also arrives tomorrow....

However, look what Jeff found tonight when he went into his shed to feed the birds! a tiny little mouse! Jeff had tried to plug up all the holes in his shed as he's had holes in the bird seed bag before, so assumed something had been trying to get to the seed - looks like he found the culprit! I haven't seen Jeff today, so haven't seen the mouse firsthand, but it does look rather cute :-)

We're seeing each other tomorrow night - sadly I'm not staying the night as I have to take my cat to the cattery on Thursday morning as we're off to the BBC Good Food show at the weekend and I want to make sure he's looked after properly.... still, I'm sure Jeff and I will spend a nice few hours together :-)

- Molly

Carrot cake and rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Molly

7 month itch?

According to my friends, the internet and countless 'Agony Aunts', there are a few 'stages' (for want of a better word) that most couples go through - the first being the '7 month itch', which is apparently when the honeymoon period is over, you stop being on your best behaviour all the time and you both see each other properly - warts and all. Some couples get through it, some, after realising that their partner really wasn't the person they thought they were, split....

As Jeff and I were together for 3.5 years last time, I didn't think we'd go through it - after all, we went through some pretty tough times and stood by each other. After splitting up in October 2009 and not having any contact until November 2010, we've basically been 'together' for the last 7 months and it's been really, really great.

However, the last week has been quite tough going - Jeff is still settling into his job and I've been feeling a bit unloved and unappreciated. This culminated in a midnight text exchange whilst I was on holiday in another country with a friend and followed by a lot of very LONG emails.

Jeff and I don't really text each other, or phone - we're both quite busy people and we've tended to email each other. However, I've found myself waiting longer and longer for Jeff's replies and even though I was able to email Jeff from abroad, send him photographs etc... I didn't hear from him for 2 days.

After our exchange, Jeff apologised - and I realised that he has been going through a lot of stuff at work and that I probably shouldn't be too hard on him, nor too demanding. I suppose it's just setting expectations? If he tells me he's too busy / tired / can't reply for a while, then I'd be OK.... but it was just the not knowing why he wasn't replying to me and it made me feel a bit crap.

Thankfully, I think we managed to sort it out - Jeff even suggested an open air theatre performance in a couple of months which sounds amazing (it's usually me who suggests things as I'm the planner, Jeff's very laid back) and I'm really looking forward to going.

So, I drove round to Jeff's house last night after work - the first time I had seen him since before my holiday. I said I wouldn't turn up until 6:00pm, however managed to get round to his house by 5:20pm, which meant I did some cleaning (much to his annoyance!) before he got there... Jeff had done a Tesco's order a couple of days before and got all the ingredients for the New York Cheesecake that we were going to make (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2869/new-york-cheesecake) and after I'd given him the gifts I bought him whilst on holiday and had a bit of a chat, we set to work making the cheesecake.

Unfortunately it soon became apparent that it wasn't a very quick recipe - bake the base for 10 minutes, then do part of the topping, stick in oven, reduce temperature, blah, blah.. etc.. etc. I admit, I did get a bit annoyed as I really just wanted to 'chill' with Jeff and whilst I usually love baking and cooking with him, it did appear that we were slaves in the kitchen and couldn't really relax whilst we were making the bloody cheesecake!

Added to which, we didn't think we had enough ingredients to make 2 - one for my work colleagues and one for his, so we actually drove to the Supermarket nearby and got more cream cheese and sour cream - turns out, we didn't actually need any more, so poor Jeff has 3 tubs of Philadelphia in the fridge and a lot of sour cream!

We managed to sort most of it out by 9:00pm and after stating that I really didn't want to cook anything for dinner, given that we had been in the kitchen for at least 1.5 hours, we decided to order curry. It wasn't too bad - however it was hardly healthy and considering I'm getting my tattoo next week (yes, that's still going ahead, can't WAIT!) I really don't want the tattooist to be tattooing on a big, fat, wobbly thigh. Plus - I really do want Jeff and myself to continue eating healthily and not go back to our old habits of eating crap.

Jeff opened a bottle of wine and we drank that whilst watching a documentary about the Elephant man - Joseph Merrick. We had recorded it on Jeff's Skyplus box a couple of weeks ago and it was very interesting.

We then made the final part of the cheesecake - the topping, which thankfully didn't take too long, before heading off to bed and cuddling - that was probably the nicest part of the evening as I had really missed Jeff in the last week, especially as we had a bit of a 'discussion' a few days before that.

As I've got a friend's wedding this weekend where I'm taking the wedding photographs, we're next seeing each other on Sunday night and next weekend is the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham which I know we are both really looking forward to. I'm going to try and stop being so stroppy and I'm hoping Jeff will be able to give me a little more reassurance that he's not going to go anywhere......

- Molly

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

Winning Bank Holiday weekend – Part II

After the brilliant, yet knackering Saturday that Jeff and I spent together, Sunday looked like it wouldn’t live up to as much fun. Originally, we were thinking of travelling down to Brighton, mooching around there and investigating the beach. However, the lovely English weather wasn’t particularly nice and rather than drive a couple of hours, just to wear a coat and jumper along the coast, we decided to take a rain check on that idea.

Instead, we had a bit of a lie in and then headed out to the Winchester Farmers market which has become a bit of a regular activity with us. As we reached the car park, we had a bit of good news – free parking! Hurrah! We usually don’t buy that much stuff – just enough to make lunch with, however we actually bought quite a lot this time around! Absolutely brilliant pork sausages, really nice bison burgers, wonderful tomato and watercress bread and two different types of cheeses – a lovely mature cheddar and one with cumin seeds in it. We also bought a couple of different pickles – a sweet onion marmalade and spicy apple chutney, as well as a vine of plum tomatoes. Jeff and I also indulged in a sausage roll and a lamb and rosemary pie (we were going to share each, however I wasn’t keen on the lamb pie, so stuck mostly to the sausage roll!).

It didn’t take us more than about 45 minutes to get everything we needed – as we had already decided that we were going to bake a lot of things, we also bought a dozen eggs and 600 grams of butter. This meant we wouldn’t have to get as much stuff from the supermarket on the way back.

I drove back from Winchester and on the way back we stopped at one of the local garden centres so we could buy another bag of birdseed. Even though it’s the summer, the greedy birds in Jeff’s garden are still eating quite a lot of seed per week and we found ourselves running out again. With the birdseed in the back of the car, we drove to the supermarket to pick up the rest of the ingredients necessary for the chocolate marble cake (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5557/chocolate-marble-cake)  and white chocolate and cranberry biscuits (http://eatlovejump.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/white-chocolate-and-cranberry-biscuits/)  It didn’t take very long (Thank Goodness) to buy everything we needed and with that, we headed back to Jeff’s house via my workplace so that I could pick up my car (As we were at Vinopolis the day before, I drove into town and left my car in the work car park over night – I didn’t want to drive back as we had been drinking).

Once back at Jeff’s house, we started on the cake making straight away – we had decided that we were both going to make a chocolate marble cake for our respective work colleagues. Jeff was in charge of making the white chocolate chips (we had to get normal white chocolate as the supermarket had completely sold out of white chocolate chips) and I was in charge of getting the cake mixture ready. Neither of us had made a marble cake before and to be honest, it wasn’t hard and certainly looked quite effective. I made half the mixture chocolate and Jeff and I took it in turns to dollop it into a cake tin. 45 minutes later and we had a lovely marble cake :-)

We started baking the other cake after the first one had come out of the oven and whilst it was baking, Jeff helped me hoover my car – which is off to the garage tomorrow for a full service. It’s probably just me being weird, however I dislike the idea of taking a dirty car to the garage as I feel that the garage employees will judge me! (I guess it’s as weird as having a cleaner and tidying / cleaning before they arrive!).

The second cake came out really well as well and then we started baking the cookies from an Ottolenghi recipe I have in my cookbook. Jeff helped a little bit, however he was mostly preoccupied trying to get a Playstation 1 emulator installed on his PC as I had mentioned how much I had enjoyed playing ‘Devil Dice’ – which is an old game that I used to play on the PS1 with one of my sisters. Unfortunately, Jeff couldn’t get it to work, despite numerous downloads and fiddling around with things – so, rather than vegetate in front of the TV, we decided to play scrabble! Apparently Jeff played a few board games with his ex last year which made me feel a bit weird – we’ve never really played board games together. However, life goes on and it seemed a bit stupid to not do something just because your partner did it with someone else – plus, I actually won! Jeff isn’t a bad loser and I don’t think I gloated too much.

We then decided to eat, so Jeff fired up the BBQ and we had a really nice meal – the sausages were absolutely gorgeous and combined with the tomato bread, the pickles and chutneys and cheese – we were onto a winner. After stuffing ourselves with lovely food from the Farmers market, we watched some TV in the shape of ‘Lose 30 stone or die’ and ‘Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail’ however about half way through Louis Theroux, I suggested we go to bed as not only was I quite tired, it was really hot in the lounge and both Jeff and I were suffering!

Monday morning arrived and unfortunately I had to go home a few hours ago – however, not before we made pancakes for breakfast. Lovely nutella and cherry ones for me, and sausage and cheese ones for Jeff – Absolutely gorgeous and we were both quite contented and full afterwards.

Unfortunately Jeff and I aren’t going to see each other much for a couple of weeks – I’m off on holiday with a friend next weekend and Jeff is working quite hard at work. We’re seeing each other on Wednesday night and hopefully cooking another Ina Garten’s recipe, but that’s it until next week :-(

- Molly