Wednesday afternoon

I’m sorry it’s been so long between posts – life’s really busy along with hospital and doctors appointments. All good news, though, so every cloud really does have a silver lining.

However, it means there’s a few gaps in my record of eating this week ...

WEDNESDAY

We went to Bohemia (one of our all-time favourite places); moderately busy for a Wednesday evening.

We ate:

Corn beef hash with rocket egg & caper salad (Bob)

Peppered mackerel paté, horseradish crème

Chump of lamb

Chicken stuffed with mozzarella & chorizo (Ali)

Chocolate chip Bread & Butter pudding (Bob)

Prune & Almond tart

FRIDAY

The Famous Sausage Sludge (and very fine it was, too).

SATURDAY

We were visiting Ali’s mum in Wales (by the way, the new headlight bulbs I fitted in the Rav were worth every penny for the drive home in the dark).

We ate:

Pork & Sausage Terrine with shallots & garlic(I’ve made a few terrines recently, this was the best so far).

Tarragon Chicken with wild rice & green beans

Chocolate cheesecake (thanks, Mr Tesco).

SUNDAY

Pork & Sausage Terrine, chilli jam, pea-shoot salad

Fillet steak, crushed new potatoes with onion, garlic & parsley, peas, field mushrooms.

(We also drank some very posh Champagne that we’d been given, after all, we had loads of good news to celebrate from last week. Unfortunately, we didn’t like it that much.)

MONDAY

Smoked haddock risotto

Left-over chocolate cheesecake

TUESDAY

Beef stew with mashed potatoes (this was cooked slowly for 4 hours, not bad at all).

WEDNESDAY

We’re going out to eat tonight, and I’ll report back on that later. However, today has been trying.

I was woken just before 06:00 by a repeated ‘beeping’ sound. I thought it was a dead battery in one of the smoke alarms, so staggered round the house in a fairly systematic manner taking all the batteries out in turn. Went back to bed: the beeping started again!

It turned out to be the intruder alarm which had a message saying ‘ALERT! Enter code now’. So I did; the message then changed to read ‘Tel line fail’. It had indeed; we had no landline. It turns out that you can only report this after 08:00 when the Virgin team wakes up. Frankly, I can’t understand why this was the case, since when I called at 08:01 I was soon speaking to ‘Marish’ in India, where it must have been at least 15:99 hrs. I know outsourcing saves money, but it’s really quite pointless when I could barely understand the person I had to interact with.

Anyway, reported the fault which (apparently) is affecting a lot of customers. According to Virgin (who have an out of date web site and even more out of date txt and email updating service) the engineer was on site and the fault would be repaired by 12:15. Then it changed to the engineer being on the way and the estimated repair time changed to 14:15. Currently (15:00 here) the repair time is now 18:15 (well, actually, they say 06:15 pm – work that out) and there are also faults with broadband and TV! Great service when you can only talk to someone half a world away. Updates follow.

In between times, please think good thoughts for my friend Mike who's taking a piano exam this afternoon!

Tuesday Afternoon ...

Another busy time. I’ve been doing some marking (just to keep my hand in) and there’s a lot of other stuff going on in our lives: some good, some less so. We’re surviving well, however. Weather’s varied from quite cold (early morning frosts and mid-day highs of 6C) to wet and warm (ish) around 12C.

In terms of food, I’ve been less well-motivated so there’s more convenience food than usual.

During the week (and a bit) we ate:

Monday 5^th

Turkey & Peaches (I’ve spoken of this before: it’s quick and tasty) then we played with sparklers in the dark garden – it was Bonfire Night, after all!

Tuesday 6^th

Fishcakes, chips, peas (Tesco’s best; they were OK).

Wednesday 7^th

A pork and sausage terrine I’d made earlier, Chicken & mushrooms.

Thursday 8^th

Special Foo Yung (Chinese takeaway)

Friday 9^th

Savoury Mince with pasta

Saturday 10^th

We went to the Dilshad in Selly oak

Special Biryani

Chicken Passanda

Naan

Sunday 11^th

This was undoubtedly the best meal of the week.

Pork and Sausage Terrine with roast beetroot, pea-shoot salad, crostini (nearly burnt the house down with the crostini. But that’s another story).

Duck breast with savoy cabbage (lardons, carrot, cream) and sauté new potatoes with a red wine sauce.

Monday 12^th

Much of the day spent waiting at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital so:

Fish & Chips

Roe & Chips (From the chip shop)

MONDAY Morning

Weather’s been very wintry this week, colder than average (the south west got 3 inches of snow on Sunday!) and occasionally wet. We’ve walked when we can and recovered from the stresses of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Had a visit from a colleague on Friday (thank you!).

THURSDAY

We ate:

Channa Korma (this is a ‘cheat’ meal that takes 15 minutes or less: fry an onion and put some rice on to boil. Add a jar of korma sauce to the onion and a can of chickpeas. I usually put some coriander in. Make sure it comes to the boil and the simmer until the rice is done. Easy, and tastes surprisingly good).

FRIDAY

We ate:

Breakfast for dinner (sausage, bacon, black pudding, mushrooms, egg, fried bread).

SATURDAY

Felt as though we had a really busy day! In the evening, we walked to Buonissimo in Harborne, where we had a splendid meal, sat at one of the better tables in the restaurant. Lots of fireworks, though they don’t seem to frighten Kat as much as the doorbell does! (We had the Feliway diffuser on in case, may or may not have helped.)

We ate:

Cozze con Piselli Aglio Olio e Peperoncino, Fresh mussels and peas sautéed with white wine garlic, chilli and olive oil. Finished with parsley (Bob).

Insalata Tricolore, Fresh buffalo mozzarella, tomato and avocado, drizzled with a basil pesto. Served with grilled ciabatta bread.

Stufato di Capriolo, Venison and root vegetable stew. Served with sage and parmesan mash, topped with spinach (Bob).

Pollo Ripieno con Pomodori Secchi e Scamorza, Free range chicken breast stuffed with sun-blushed tomato, scamorza cheese and basil in a spicy tomato and pea sauce. Served wih diced herb potatoes, mustard toast carrots.

Rum Baba al Cioccolato, Traditional napolitan sponge soaked in rum with a delicious chocolate filling (Ali).

SUNDAY

Sunshine and showers, but only about 6C. Pleasant in the afternoon.

I seemed to spend all the day cooking (not that I mind, there are many worse ways to spend the time). Did potage Crècy (carrot soup) for lunch. In the evening we ate:

Steak and Kidney Pudding (really quite traditional, except that they were individual puddings, rather than a shared big one) made more-or-less to Heston Blumenthal’s recipe (actually, made with his techniques, I guess; his is an ox-tail pudding) with creamed savoy cabbage with lardons.
Ali made Orange &Lemon Curd Pudding for dessert – excellent!

Wednesday

Dry and cold for most of the day (spent recovering from yesterday’s events) until evening when we were going into town to dine with Selwyn (as we do most months) when it poured with rain. Still, after finding a new route to that part of the City, we were able to park close to the restaurant – Opus – and we spent a pleasant evening there.

We ate:

Tian of Brixham crab, citrus salad (Selwyn)

Lincolnshire leek and smoked haddock fishcake, Free range poached egg, butter sauc

Ham hock terrine (Ali)

Escalope of rose veal Holstein, lyonnaise potatoes (Ali)

Red-legged partridge, fondant potatoes, plum sauce

Cheeses (Selwyn)

Crème brulee (Ali)

Pear and glazed rice conde

 (Incidentally, the escalope ‘Holstein’ means fried in breadcrumbs with a fried egg on top!)

When we got home, we were aware that our 87-year-old neighbour was wandering around in the rain. Turns out that his garden shed had been burgled and that the thief, in making his escape, had fallen through the garage roof. Presumably, he then just opened the garage door and limped off into the night. Can only hope he hurt himself.

Looking at the scene the next morning, I think he/they got into our garden from the house that backs on to it, went over the wire fence into our neighbour’s and then tried to exit by removing a fence panel between our garden and the other neighbour. Wouldn’t have been able to get through the hedge, I think, so tried to leave over the roof. Ali thins this happened, despite the vile weather, because there were lots of folks out for Halloween.