Has it really...

...been three months?!

Doesn't feel like it.

Anyways, I am here and I am fine (but since most of you follow me on Twitter anyway you all knew that...) I've just been busy and had nothing to blog about.

Well nothing to blog about is a bit of a fib, after all I have bought my first home and moved into it in the past few weeks, but I just had no urge to blog about anything, so I didn't.

About the only thing I did fancy blogging about were the AMAZING cupcakes that I baked a couple of weeks back. Since the last time I made a cupcake or anything that wasn't a packet mix was back before Miss Emily started school (19 years ago) it was a little scary.

Here are my beautiful tasty cupcakes:



Nom, nom, nom, nom...

Otherwise, the boxes are gradually getting unpacked, work is crazy (but will settle down after tomorrow), Esme has been not very well but is getting much better, Foley is a cute little Terror, Anthony is grumpy cos I keep coughing all night (stupid winter colds) but looks very nice in a tux...


...and I'm getting bookshelves for my birthday.

Have a truly lovely Christmas folks, I'm not going to promise to post more in the New Year, let's just see what happens.

xxx

Blog Fail...

...Epic.

Since I'm on holiday there is absolutely no excuse for not posting. Well, apart from the WoW playing and book reading and naps on the sofa with the cats and trying to get the V+ box down to under 40 hours of recordings...

Sorry

Here is the meal I made two weeks ago (after the Chinese GP)

Chicken with Chorizo
It was ok but I won't be cooking it again. Partly because we discovered that Anthony is not a huge fan of chorizo, and partly because all the prep for it took bloody ages. (Which is not good when you are overtired and very hungry). Watching Anthony waving a red pepper over the gas rings in an attempt to char the skin so we could peel it was mediumly humorous, but since the unpeeled yellow pepper ended up fine, that step can definitely be missed out. So it was nice, but far too much faff for me.

Last Saturday I cooked the Chicken in Garlic Sauce for Angie, Paul and Joe and they were all very impressed. I was also impressed as after the pepper charring incident I had forgotten how straightforward the recipe was and was expecting lots of faff. No faff, just lovely food and lovely sauce and lovely people to eat it with.

Next Sunday I shall not be cooking as I shall be at work, but for the Sunday after that I think I'm going to go for something basic - possibly a nice Cottage Pie.

I have had...

...a very relaxing five days off. Well, four so far and then rest of today which will be the only one of those days sans Anthony. Which has been lovely too.

We have both had haircuts, we've driven round various areas of Wolverhampton trying to find bits that we'd like to live in, we've been to Waitrose three times and Hobbycraft once and we've got the V+ Box down to 40 hours of free space (rather than 5).

Anthony showed amazing patience when helping me choose a new pair of trainers:
K - Not those ones
A - Why not?
They've got too much white on them
What about these ones?
Too grey
How about these?!?
Yuck!
These ones? (said through gritted teeth)
Hmmm....
Eventually I decided on a pair of the Hmmm... ones (what do you mean you can't tell the difference?)

(pictures (in order) for those who did not want to link click)




They also ended up being men's ones rather than women's, partly due to the fact that all the men's ones were out for people to try while you had to ask for the women's ones (and I couldn't put the poor shop guy through it).

That's the first pair of trainers I've owned in 15 years...my last pair were for PE at school and they lasted through my gym moments at uni too. Since then I've not really worn trainers, and the pair of Anthony's that I "borrow" are a size too big and so unrunnable in. Not that I'm about to take up running. Definitely not.

On Sunday I cooked up some Veal Scaloppine. Or at least I would have done had Waitrose had any veal left. They did not, so instead we had Pork Scaloppine.


I very slightly over salted it (due to not being used to using salt when cooking but following instructions in the book to the letter) but Anthony said it was "Bloody lovely". So that was a success.

In two weeks time I have promised to cook Chicken in Garlic Sauce for Angie, Paul and Joe - eeek! Cooking for real people! People who won't be afraid to tell me if it is actually inedible (Joe), but who will also pour me more wine if it is (Angie and Paul). Angie also hit the nail on the head when she called me a 'dinner party cook'. It's true, cooking is such a big event for me at the moment. One of the reasons she therefore decided I should have a dinner party!

Back to work tomorrow...I have three days in, then one off, then four in, then NINE off! (Then my next break is June, then Monza!)

I completely intended...

...to blog yesterday, and then suddenly it was bedtime and I realised I hadn't. Bad me.

Right then.

On Sunday (after the Grand Prix) I cooked Chicken in Garlic Sauce, which was flipping gorgeous!

It looked like this:


The recipe suggests serving it with boiled new potatoes and green beans, but since I did my usual thing of forgetting to do anything to go with it until five minutes before it was ready to serve, so we had lots of peas and sweetcorn instead.

Apart from the fact there seemed to be gallons of sauce left (the recipe is for 4 and I didn't cut any quantities down) it was absolutely perfect. It's definitely going to be made again, although next time I think I shall try reducing the sauce a lot more!

Lovely Twitter is not only keeping me informed about all the latest F1 shenanigans (Lewis, Lewis, Lewis...cheats never prosper!) but it also won me a prize!
The folks at the Naxos Music Library had run a Twitter competition to win a free months subscription as part of their 30th birthday celebrations. All you had had to do was DM @naxosrecords for a chance to win.

They contacted me on Wednesday to say I'd won it but then Anthony promptly brought me back down to earth by asking me if I'd noticed the date...
Luckily he was very wrong and so I now have a whole month of picking myself some music to listen to. I don't know much about classical music so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

*Anthony has just phoned me so I have completely lost my train of thought*

Um.

Erm.

Here, have a cat picture.



In fact, have two.


(I love the fact Foley seems to have too many legs in this one)

I didn't cook...

...Cheese and Corn Pudding or Ragout of Venison with Wild Mushrooms or Creamy Tarragon Chicken this weekend. I didn't cook Beef Wellington either.

Instead we had roast pork with roast potatoes and parsnips. Lovely. Not photogenic though, sorry.

As well as that we also broke a world record - "Shortest Amount of Time Spent in Ikea and Actually Managing to Buy What You Wanted".

This is a picture of my old desk back when I'd just moved into this house (note hideous rental curtains and the evil pinkness of my uncovered armchair).



This was OK back when I first got it, but now it was just annoying. The top was all warped, the whole thing wobbled like hell whenever you typed and the chair wouldn't fit under it properly meaning that you couldn't actually get close in.

So I have been hunting for desks and failing to find one that I liked. Then some clever person posted a link to Ikea Hacker on Twitter and there I got a few ideas.

Then I went on the Ikea website and plotted and planned. I had to do lots of this so that Anthony would think a trip to Ikea was actually a good idea.

We went on Sunday morning and got there about 10.30...we left an hour later. (They open for browsing at 10 and for sales at 11, there were only about 20 cars in the car park when we got there and no dawdling people AT ALL).

That hour saw us locate the table top, table legs, shelf and kitchen cabinet legs that we needed. It also included the obligatory hot dog and trip to the food shop for pink mushrooms and a bag of Daim bars.

Sunday afternoon was spent creating a masterpiece (hence the no faff roast for dinner).

May I present for your viewing pleasure, my new desk.



(Note lovely cream curtains, throw disguised armchair and also new blue rug to try and protect the hideously cheap carpet from dying under the chair castors).

All solid pine which has made the living room smell absolutely lovely.

It's also made me much more confident about creating the desk space I will have one day when we actually own a place and can build proper fixed-to-the-wall things.

I have always been...

...domestically challenged.

My house is a mess, I loathe washing up and when I think about cooking properly I tend to come over a little faint.

I just don't have a very tidy life. When I do try to have a tidy life, or when someone tries to help me have a tidy life, things I need tend to vanish. (Like the sewing threads we spent 15 minutes looking for last night that had vanished after Anthony cleared up the living room) (they turned up behind the radiator...neither of us knows how they got there).

One of the things I am determined to do (apart from buy a dishwasher) is to cook actual proper meals. Not that I live on microwave rubbish, but it is mostly whack-it-in-the-oven-and-forget-about-it food.

So today (after drooling over it for four months) I finally bought this book.



I had intended to buy it post-Christmas (when it was half price) with some of my Christmas/Birthday vouchers (that I never got - wahhh!) but couldn't. But since with my discount it was only £16.75 I decided that I'd waited long enough. (and yes, it is still cheaper on Amazon and on Waterstones.com but buying it from my store helps to pay my wages).

So now I am trying to decide what I should cook on Sunday...

Cheese and Corn Pudding?
Ragout of Venison with Wild Mushrooms?
Creamy Tarragon Chicken?

Or I could always try the dish I talked about with Anthony during our first ever MSN chat...Beef Wellington.

Probably not

I love the fact it has all the basic dishes in, as well as some fancier ones that it makes sound easy. I love the DVD that comes with it containing step-by-step techniques on everything from chopping herbs, to cooking pasta, to making caramel, to gutting and boning fish. (and they're all in the back of the book too).

I especially love the shopping list book that comes with it. Pocket-sized and containing the ingredients and serving sizes for every single recipe. It's gone straight into my bag and will be perfect for the inevitable time when I haven't thought out what to cook and we're in the supermarket looking for something for dinner.

My grand plan (and it's cunning too) is to try and cook something every Sunday. It'll be for Sunday lunch on 3 of them, and then something quicker and easier on the Sunday that I work. This way I can still have a sense of achievement after one of those Sundays where we don't go out and just flake out and watch the Grand Prix/Numbers/CSI / play WoW / sew.

I shall even try and take a picture of my weekly dish, possibly even with Anthony's flash camera!