Happy Valentine’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day! Hubby and I were obviously separated at birth (oh, that’s worrying – maybe not then) because we both bought each other Champagne. I got pink Moet which is my absolute favourite (lots of brownie points there) and I also got some white lilies (extra extra points for remembering that I prefer those to the pink Stargazer ones). In return he got a bottle of Piper, a pack of Green and Black’s dark chocolate covered cookies (my favourite too) and the new James Patterson novel. We then proceeded to have a very snotty row about something very insignificant (boo), but made up later (yey!) so it’s all hunky dory again now.
B, on the other hand is fairly disgruntled. She emailed me this morning to say that she got a big fat f*** all (sorry Mum) so far. Even after giving her other half his card, CD and chocolates last night so he could at least nip to the shop next door while she was at work. But no…nothing. Not so much as a crème egg or a packet of Wotsits. He’s in big trouble.
I will be cooking something yummy tonight as Mum is arriving on the 5.30 flight. It can only be better than last night’s efforts. I had a bit of a culinary disaster. Still, I tell you about all the successes so it’s only fair to give you the failures as well.
I decided to cook Thai prawn cakes with spicy peanut sauce and a Thai dipping sauce as well, along with some stir fried vegetables with cashews. It was Rachel Allen’s recipe and there was a great deal of grating garlic and faffing around which is what I like best, but then it all went downhill. I thought I’d blanch the pieces of broccoli first as sometimes they can be a bit too raw in the stir fry. Then the prawn cake mixture seemed very wet, and when it went into the hot oil it just kind of hung there limply and I couldn’t turn them over because they fell apart. In the end I had to nuke them to get them to stay together so they were somewhat crispy. Then when I served them up the Thai dipping sauce was so evil that we all felt like we were breathing fire, and the peanut sauce looked like…er…well, it didn’t look very nice – but it tasted okay. Lastly, because of all the hassle I had cooking the prawn cakes I forgot all about the broccoli and it was like green sludge in the pan. The rest of the vegetable stir-fry was okay and to give them their due, the boys tried valiantly to eat it (not #2, obviously). There was plenty of polite ‘this is nice’ and pushing it all around the plate, but we eventually all gave up and fed it to the bin. Ah well. Whatever you end up eating, I hope your Valentine’s day is full of lurve xx
