Easter Sunday Roast Lamb

Due to being late for the butchers yesterday I ended up having to get a rolled shoulder of lamb rather than leg but spying the amount of fat around it made me confident that it would taste better than leg and the roast tatties would be fabulous.  I was not wrong.  The fattier the meat the tastier.  I just can't believe that with my love of pork belly and rib of beef that I've never bought shoulder of lamb.

We spent all day painting the front room and it's still not finished.  The blue wall is going to need four coats and I got two done.  Thanks Dad for choosing the worst colour ever! ;)  Once the walls are done it will be glossing the skirting boards and window sill so lots to do yet, then two more rooms.  I think I was a little ambitious to think we could do everything in less than a week.  It's looking a lot better though already, we will be able to use the room as a room again instead of a dumping ground.  Always nice.

I downed tools around 4:30pm and had a shower then remembered the lamb.  I wanted to cook it on a low heat for a long time, it was going to be a late dinner...d'oh. I put some garlic and rosemary under the fat and chucked it in the oven raw...no time for browning today.

I like mashed potato with lamb but had to do some roasties too with all that lovely fat so I skipped the Yorkshires tonight.  I mashed carrots and swede with lots of butter and we had spring greens, purple sprouting broccoli and peas, with a port and reccurrant gravy.  It was absolutely divine, even better than the rib of beef last week (and I didn't think that was possible).  Shoulder of lamb is the way forward!  Just ask Colin....

Another family tradition (well, one of my Mum's) is a little basket filled with chocolate eggs so I always do that, mainly for Mr W's benefit as I don't eat much chocolate (although the Lindor are mine....probably last me weeks).

I shall finish my post with a photo of some beautiful lillies that Mr W bought for me.  Quite proud of this for a phone photo :)

Hope you all had a lovely Easter and enjoy your bank holiday tomorrow UK'ers xx

Easter Saturday Steak Night

Unfortunately for me, Mr W got his way and steak it was!  The butcher had no fillet left by the time I got there so had to get a huge rib eye too...I am so hard done by ;)  I also had to get lamb shoulder for dinner instead of leg which really should teach me to get to the butchers earlier.  I was at the gym in the morning, a Tabata class and then a run on the treadmill, then an hour in the bath to recover :)

We were pretty busy in the afternoon, preparing the front lounge for painting and another tip run so by the time dinner came around I was starving.  I therefore plumped for pasta with a cream sauce to have with the steak, had to make it bearable for me ;)  We have some interesting Garufolo pasta which is like thick spirally spaghetti so I used that and made a sauce from hydrated porcini, fresh mushrooms, onions, garlic, armagnac and lashings of double cream. 

I did some chargrilled veg on the side and sliced the rib eye rather than serving it whole...bit easier with pasta.  It was lush, I am actually quite glad Mr W made me get steak :)

Mr W made us an amazing dessert too, lemon creme brulee made with Sicilian lemons.  Mmmmm.



Good Friday Fish Feast

I'm not religious in the slightest but for some reason always try to have fish on Good Friday. Must be a family tradition I guess as my Dad mentioned he was having fish for dinner when I visited him on Friday.  We generally talk about food :)  Anyways, I bought some skinless haddock from Waitrose stupidly, as I can never fry fish without skin (is there a knack or do you actually need the skin to fry it?) without it falling apart.  I thus decided to bake it in a cheese sauce with tenderstem broccoli and peas, and to accompany I boiled some baby new potatoes and covered them with butter and chives (doing great in the garden at the moment) and some carrots and leeks.  It was very tasty!

I also attempted to make some deep fried courgette balls (had them in Carluccio's) so I julienned a round courgette (harder than it sounds - normal shaped ones are much easier) and I wrang them out in muslin to remove the water.  Think that's where I went wrong as they were just dry then so I ended up adding egg and flour and making fritters instead.  They were good, but would have been tastier with some pesto drizzled over and parmesan.  Next time.....


Tomorrow will be steak night if Mr W gets his way although I am getting a little fed up with steak every week which is a shame.  It should be more of an occasional treat I think but try telling Mr W that ;)  I usually cook lamb on Easter Sunday so will see what the butcher has.  We don't do anything family-related for Easter as we are usually busy in the garden.  This year we have 10 days off in total and plan to paint three rooms and gravel the front garden.  Might not leave much time to cook but shall do my best....all that work will work up quite an appetite! :)

Stressful Week = Nice Food Required

I have had the week from hell at work so I have had to reward myself with some serious comfort food in between the gym and running (although not been much of that this week to be fair).  My poor Sky is still not better either although her eye has started to heal now so another course of antibiotics (and another fortune spent at the vets yesterday) and hopefully she will get better.  The vet did say that she may have some dead corneal tissue which will need to be scraped off under a general anaesthetic (yuck!) so fingers crossed it doesn't come to that, poor little mite.  We are up to £400 already, thankfully I have insurance but stupid me didn't read the small print and we only get £1000 per complaint so think I may well have to fork out if surgery is needed.  She is worth it though.

Anyway, back to food....  I cooked some terrible stuff in the week not worth a mention (quick, easy and not very nutritious kind of stuff) but I did manage to do a healthy dish one night - Piri Piri chicken kebabs with basmati, salad and tzatziki.  It's one of my summertime favourites and it was like summer last week - crazy temperatures for March! 

I got a lovely bag of salad from my organic veg box but it contained dandelions of all things.  I have spent several weekends digging them out and feeding them to my tortoise so wasn't impressed to find them in my salad :-/  Apart from that, it was all good.  I put the rice into egg cups before turning them out, just because I like to faff and pretend I'm a better cook than I am :) 

Mr W was away on Friday night so I cooked myself a veggie bolognese using peppers, courgettes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, chopped tomatoes (fresh and tinned), passata, Martini Rosso (try it in cooking, would never suggest drinking it though), balsamic vinegar, seasoning and chilli flakes.  Not really a bolognese but of a fashion....  Colin wasn't too happy about the lack of meat!  We usually get an Indian take-away on Friday's and he will even eat curry, but I took Mr W out for dinner on Thursday to the local Spanish restaurant so thought I'd try to make up for it with a lower calorie meal (if you discount the cheese and double helping of spaghetti :).

Check out this courgette, have you ever seen a round one?!  I got them from Waitrose, mainly for the novelty value:

Mr W was supposed to be away last night too but he finished work a lot quicker so came home. I hadn't bought steak like I normally do (I was going to have lamb chops for one) so he had to get some from Tesco on the way.  They were nowhere near as good as my butchers (very pink, not dark like I'm used to) but beggars can't be choosers.  It was pretty tasty in the end.  I used the left over 'bolognese' to stuff romano peppers and butternut squash (added cheese to the latter and grilled it) and did some mini roasted potatoes in olive oil and Maldon.

Have you ever had Old Cotswold Leghorn eggs?  They are blue shelled and in a blue box - you can get them in Morrison's sometimes and always in Waitrose.  They are well worth spending the extra on (about £2 for 6) - the yolks are orange and they taste amazing.  I had scambled eggs on granary for brunch, sprinkled with a little parsley (love parsley with eggs)...

Due to not buying steak, and Mr W due home on Sunday after two nights away (hmmm), I bought a huge rib of beef from the butchers for today.  It is our favourite but we only tend to get it occasionally as it is a treat really - too fatty (and tasty) to have all the time.  There was a time way back when we had it every other week but that was far too decadent so I stopped getting it so often. 

I conveniently had a cauliflower and some Gruyere in (not so much for the waistline) so I had to make my absolute favourite roast beef accompaniment - Chez Watson heart attack cauliflower cheese, mmmmm.  I roasted potatoes for two hours in all that lovely beef fat and did some Yorkshires (sadly not my own, just Aunt Bessie's but the ones in foil, not the ready done ones).  I also cooked some organic carrots, purple sprouting broccoli and peas, plus some honey roasted parsnips which I left in quite big pieces and they were delicious.  The gravy was made from the cauliflower and potato water with a beef stock pot, beef juices and some thickener. 

It was a lovely end to a lovely chilled weekend which was much needed after a mental week at work.  We spent the day gardening and I scraped all the weeds out of the paving on the drive (ever wish you hadn't started something...) which was extremely boring but needed doing.  Hopefully we can get the front garden finished in the next couple of weeks, can't wait to get gravel down and not need to do anything with it.  Got enough to do with the back garden and a whole house to refurbish! 

Hope you all had a good one and will try to be back before weekend, it's just a bit difficult at the moment... x

Sunny Sunday

I got up at 8am today which was actually 7am, stupid BST!  I made a fresh pot of strong coffee and sat out on the patio on our Christmas present from my in-laws - a lovely City blue bistro set - listening to the birds.  It's always nice to get up early where I live when the weather is good, before the lawn mowers and strimmers start....

I managed to get the majority of my work done before 10am and we headed off to B&Q to buy compost, weed mat, vegetable seeds, and new plants for my pots.  I bought some petunia's, sweet peas, trailing lobelia, and something else which I've forgotten the name of - nice little white flowers. We did some digging and tidying but it was pretty hot (I am even sunburnt on my shoulders) so made sure we got some relaxing time in too with the papers and a margarita or two.

The animals seemed to enjoy themselves, with the cats sunbathing all day and Mr Jinks eating his bodyweight in lettuce and dandelions.  Sky seems a little bit better today so fingers crossed!

I made BLT's for brunch and Mr W made us a fresh banana milkshake....

We've got a pond full of mating frogs at the moment, plus frog spawn, so should have loads of tadpoles soon :)  A particularly randy frog kept us amused with his mating call all day before jumping on a poor unsuspecting female....

For dinner I had bought a huge 5lb chicken but it wasn't roast dinner weather so just roasted the chicken and we had it with salad, sweet potato and potato salad with chives from the garden.  Simple.

Had a lovely day today and really not ready for work tomorrow :(  Know it's going to be a very hard week so may not be back before weekend.  Wish me luck!

Spring Saturday & First BBQ of the Year

What a fabulous day Saturday was, well apart from the fact that I had brought some urgent work home (booo) and I had to take my beloved cat Sky to the vet for the fourth or fifth time in the last few weeks.  She has a nasty ulcer on her eye and we've had two courses of antibiotics, four lots of different drops, and still no better :(  I spent nearly an hour at the vets on a lovely hot sunny afternoon, where they took swabs to send to the lab to see if they can identify the cause and also gave her more antibiotics and another type of drop.  The vet is worried that it could be a 'melting ulcer' which will eat away at her eye and will require emergency surgery so please cross everything for her, poor little mite :(  I only have £750 left on my insurance too, didn't check that when I signed up...£1000 maximum per condition.  Don't know where they get their prices from to be honest, we're all in the wrong jobs! 

Anyway, after a very sad (and teary when we got home) afternoon Mr W cheered me up by making his famous home-made burgers (beef mince, herbs, spices, breadcrumbs) and putting the BBQ on.  We had the burgers with cheddar slices on sesame buns with salad and various sauces, sausages, sweetcorn, sweet potatoes, tabbouleh, and pasta with pesto and pine nuts (the latter two bought from Tesco because I didn't have much time yesterday).

Had a few beers in the sun and everything seemed a lot better :)  Had a few rums later on and everything felt even better but made sure we got an early night ready for the B&Q run and gardening on Sunday, clocks going forward and all, and me having to get up early to do some more work first :-/  Missed my tabata class today due to work but also found out that my gym is closing on 15th April due to council cuts.  Gutted, as there isn't another gym near enough for me to have the motivation to go very often so will probably cancel my membership and just run outside.  I do have plans to get a treadmill in the garage but we shall see....