A day oeuf

Not that every day isn't a day off for me but this one I stayed in my pajamas and my bed the entire day alternating between watching my brothers and sisters boxset and sleeping. At one point I had to get up because the bag of frozen chips I was using to soothe my aching head decided to empty its contents through an unforeseen hole in the bag. After i'd cleared the chip downpour I made myself a big bowl of heaven.

Thoroughly recommended. The golden yolks pour through the mash potato mountain in a creamy river. Extremely soothing.

Eggs are ever so versatile. With this box I have made chocolate steamed sponge pudding (1 egg), boiled eggs and soldiers (2 eggs), spaghetti carbonara (1 egg) and the above (the finale). Food gold.

Today is looking like another day of hard work so i'd better go and get dressed. I have to go to the post office.

Bye for now bon bons xxxxxxxxxx

Surprise!

Had a wonderful surprise party for bob last night at the estate. Had pink and white balloons, (1) party popper, and a whole secret balcony of guests lying in wait. Bob arrived and thought i'd just had too much cava bien merci I was fizzing over with excitement so much but then I let the lid of the guest pot and she was genuinely surprised.

We ate tiger prawn and chilli spaghetti:

1kg spaghetti

Tiger prawns

cherry tomatoes pan roasted

2 med chillis chopped

1 lemon zested and juiced

flat leaf parsley chopped

Cook spaghetti according to packet, add prawns for last few mins, drain well and add rest of stuff, return to heat for at least 3 mins and mix carefully.

Here's a tip for you. Never try to cook spaghetti for ten people at once. We'll be finding it worming around the house for days.

For birthday cake we had Chocolate Steamed Sponge Pudding:

I had a practise run the other day with Pink Granny and we made a cranberry one. Very nice and fresh. Perfect for our lunch. As people who remember the name of my SimsPets dog will attest to, I do love a good pudding. Tip: Put the extra sauce in a jug like granny did rather than tip it all over the pudding so it's like a floating chocolate island. As unfortunately, people laugh at you for that.

Recipe:

Grease 2 pint pudding basin. Spoon in 1/4 of chocolate sauce (melted 150g choc, then simmered with 150g icing sugar, 150g butter until all melted, remove from heat and stir in 2 tbls milk). Then mix together 225g self raising flr, 85g caster sugar, 115g softened butter, then add 1 large egg, 8 tbls milk, and mix well. Put into the pudding basin and firmly cover top with foil making a bit of a handle as well to pull it out after. Stand basin in a pan with water half way up basin sides. Bring to boil then simmer for 2 hours, topping up boiling water if necessary as can't boil dry or go off boil. Pull out after 2 hrs, tip onto dish, and spoon chocolate sauce over or put in jug if there's too much.

Back to the present and after dinner we played a riotous game of the cereal box game, gave bob her gifts and wiggled around to beyonce and ricky marts. Easeh Easeh.

The night crept off to sleep with Dashy singing and guitar playing Bob and I a lullaby in bed. It was ever so soothing we drifted right off but not before Bob had commented that Dashy should make an album of bedtime lullabies for cool parents to pop on for their children. A sort of David Gray for the under eights.

Ooh the postman just came whilst I was writing this and I had got so fired up about birthdays that I forgot it wasn't mine and that the parcels weren't for me. What a shame.

oh p.s we had birthday breakfast in bed this morn with toast jenga and softly softly boiled eggs a la delia. Got to test out my new swan eggcup. It looks like it's enjoying nibbling the toast here.

Bye for now my eggy breads xxxxxxx

Larkrise to Liverpool

Like the gentry folk of Larkrise I have transcended the physical and emotional barriers to cross the mersey to Candleford/Liverpool (you really need to watch Larkrise to Candleford like me to understand this but you probably don't as it's a Sunday night period drama that often fights for time with Come Dine with Me). Whatevs. Now where's my tube back home??

So far on my journey I have traversed a wide variety of cuisine.

Breakfasted on branflakes jewelled with blueberries and bananas

Fell into a sea of jacket potato, cheese and beans. Butter is not banned on MY polystyrene tray.

Left my heart in Tokyo

And made loads of cocktails which we forgot to document we were so busy drinking.

The easiest recipe for all my readers at home is:

Amaretto Sour. Seemed to be some sort of sugar syrup (melt sugar in water in pan), amaretto and lemon juice shaken together with ice then poured over ice. Was gorge corge as they say.

Made it back after a very happy weekend. Bye for now my celebrations xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And my tart was filled with joy

Had a wonderful evening on Sunday with all the London family at the flat. I made a quiche with mash and roasted cherry tomatoes. Accompanied by lots of help from Bob, Chazzy and Alex.

I rolled out my ready made pastry and lined a tart dish with it. Then I cooked broccoli, onion and leeks and mixed that with beaten eggs and milk and tipped all that into the dish. Oh I blind baked the pastry for a bit. Then put the whole thing into the oven for what seemed like ages probably because it wasn't up high enough. Eventually it swelled up and we had a delicious and healthy treat.

Afterwards we had jam tarts with the scraps of the pastry and Blue Granny's homemade jam. A few jam tarts got broccoli bits in as for some reason the florets got EVERYWHERE but no one seemed to mind. Just makes more of their five a day!

The next day Roasty and I strode out early to see Sashy at Selfridges and had some good chats and nibbles of the Chromehearts chocolate stash. In the Wonder room I commented that I wished they wouldn't put the jewels in those staid glass cabinets and Roasty replied, 'I know babes, I don't see why. We're precious and we're not in glass cabinets.' Oh aren't we just. Then we went to the Royal Academy and saw two amazing shows. One was about climate change and in the picture below Roast is standing in a light waterfall. He is very precious.

Watching a film now that annoyingly has subtitles so i'd better go and look at the screen.

Bye for now my picture perfects xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The sunshine has her birthday hat on

Today is Becky Sunshine's birthday party day and so I am making her a Becky Sunshine Lemon tart as a present.

Obvs ready rolled pastry. Not made of time. Okay: Butter up the tin. Put the pastry in it, pressing down with your thumb at the sides to stick it down and tearing off the excess pastry.

Put in oven for 10 mins gas mark 5 with some foil or baking beans to keep the pastry down. Remove the foil/whatevs and bake for another 8-10 mins until the base is dry and lightly cooked. Lower oven setting to gas mark 3.

For the filling beat one whole egg and 4 large egg yolks, and 150g caster sugar in a bowl until smooth. Carefully stir in zest of 4 medium lemons, the juice, 143ml double cream and mix until evenly blended. Leave to stand for 5 mins, then skim off the foam from the top of the mixture. Carefully pour the filling into the pastry case. Bake the tart for 25-30 mins or until the filling in the centre is springy to the touch. Leave to stand for 15 mins then serve warm or cool completely and chill before serving. Decorate with raspberries and icing sugar dust.

Whilst it was setting I went for a last snowy walk with Lexie and Mum.

Off to the station now to battle through to London. I've heard a rumour that some people are too snowed in to go to becky's birthday tonight but I would rather sledge there than miss it!

Bye princesses xxxxxxxxxxxxx

There's no plaice like home

This week I had the good news that i'm being sent a conditional contract for my job. That means that it should be only a few weeks until I start working. In celebration of this Mum asked me what I would like for dinner. I wanted fish pie and Cava so that is what we had.

Poach some fish in milk. We had cod (white fish) and haddock (smoked). Cook some potatoes and mash them. Make a white sauce and put cheese in it. Hard boil some eggs and cut them up. Flake the fish and take out the bones if there are any visible. Add eggs, prawns, and flaked fish to the sauce. Put that in a dish and layer the mash potato on top. Grate some cheese on top of that. Put in the oven for about half an hour until the cheese has melted golden brown.

Top tip: use the milk the fish has been poached in to make the white sauce.

Also, don't bother making if you haven't got much time. Takes ages. But is amazing.

We ate it with a leek and mushroom mix and I drank most of the cava to see if it would bubble my cold away. We also watched the Railway Children whilst eating it. Very sad film. Wept most of the way through.

Bye for now fishies xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ouch

Ooh i've been away so long that I feel like i'm starting from scratch. The sound in the title was my blog hymen being torn again..

I know i've missed a lot so I'll do a run down of the last two weeks' most salient meals.

I had chicken kiev at Dave's 23rd birthday dinner on the 24th. Another re-first after ten years away from it. We went to the staff of life in mowsley and cuddled by the fire happily. Dave is always very on the pulse. Even got to 23 first! We had a roaring time.

Also available were fish and chips, and sausage and mash with crackling.

On Christmas Eve night Ro and I went to Dad's and made him a prawn and pea (both garden and sugarsnap) risotto. One of my faves. I can't be bothered to put the recipe up as it's so old and easy and i'm taking this first blog gently, but if you want a demonstration please ask.

Then obvs Christmas dins with all the trimmings but i'll spare you those details till next year. You must be full of it by now.

Made Bob's salmon spinach dish the other day for mother. It is on one of my last of december's posts. A must try!

After New Years Eve in London with all my darlings (mostly a liquid diet that night fyi apart from my poor neck) I slunk off to the north for a few days with my wonderful Jamie.

We were feeling a bit frangible after a night on the town so on Sunday we went round to Ian's house and played Monopoly whilst Jamie made us stew. I think he just put garlic, onion, chopped potatoes, chunks of chicken, chopped carrots and chicken stock into a big pot and cooked it all up for about 4o mins. Oh so heartwarming. Needed that energy to power right the way to the bitter end of monopoly. Especially Star Wars monopoly. Nightmare.

Anyway, it's been good catching up. Bye for now crumpets xxxxxxxx