keralan fish curry

Well Lucy, it's a good point. Basically my commenting had fallen over *again*, I was trying to reply to Sarah's comments earlier but the farqing thing just wouldn't let me sign-in. I mean what the fuckity-fuck? Ridiculous.

Anyway, yes curry again only this time it's fish curry. The decision was made for us really as Sainsbury's packaging is so god-awful it was either eat it now, or let the fridge stink of haddocks until we get around to eating it.

Food of the Milos
Monkey was on pickley form today, although he quite enjoyed his trip to the supermarket, and whilst ana was looking at flowers in homebase we spent at least 4000 hours in the showroom shower boxes.

Whilst he's sleeping I fire up a batch of leek and potato soup, partly to use up the left-over blue cheese kinger and virginie bought over the other week, and partly because it's usually a winner for him. Hurrah, it still is, and he has a biggish bowl with some baguette for dinner, fruit and yoghurt for pudding and then a lot of splashing in the bath.


sources
keralan fish curry - Nigella Lawson, Delicious Magazine, Feb 2009, p83
potato, leek and stilton soup - Delicious Magazine, January 2007, p104

digressions & pad thai

Having given it the 'big' one to Saucepan and Davisss about my rowing machine prowess, naturally it all goes wrong today. Very wrong.

The machine absolutely breaks me into many small sweating and crying pieces. It's bad, but it turns out to be the highlight of my day given the quarterly vitals check up which preceded it. On the upside my resting heart rate is so low it's almost deathly. The downside is for some reason (two days of medieval curry/pizza/real ale/roast dinners perchance?), I'm 27.7% fat. Luckily for me Ogreg feels my pain, although is that necessarily a good thing?

The bad vibes clearly run in the family because the milos are struck low by dropsy or a quinsey or something, puking everywhere. An affliction only cured by an extreme bout of Meg & Mog on DVD.

Back to the point of this blog though; faced with incipient obesity I decide to cut out the booze during the week. However that witch McCarthy like a modern day Siren, lures me with a bottle of chilled vino blanco whilst I'm cooking pad thai. At least it's a good pad thai...

Food of the Milos
Having puked up his milk in the afternoon, the milos didn't really eat anything this evening but went straight to bed. Poor monkey.

sources
pad thai - Donna Hay, Modern Classics Book One, p133

home style chicken curry

Friday night is curry night, and tonight we're saving money by not having a take-away; instead we've got an Atul Kochhar special from the Observer Food Monthly.

Now i've cooked this before and loved it, so I was really looking forward to it but I think the time I spent fannying around looking at chicken thighs in Sainsburys (sorry whag), wasn't time well spent. This becomes rapidly clear once i get home and discover my bone filleting isn't all 'that'.

Whilst being less 'meaty' than originally planned, it's still a good recipe and one I definitely 'Bridport'.

Food of the Milos
After two night's of culinary victories, I'm delivered the equivalent of a kick in the cobblers when I get back tonight to find a plate of pasta and cheese on the table. It seems the ana's made the mistake of saying he was going to have fish pasta for dinner, forgetting 'pasta' in milo language means smothered in cheese and not a delicately spiced bowl of smoked salmon and rice-shaped pasta. Cobblers!

sources
home style chicken curry - Atul Kochhar, Observer Food Monthly

sunday roast & pasta and mushroom special

Sunday bloody sunday! Sadly we have to head home but before we do we manage to squeeze in an excellent sunday lunch at the gupshill manor, with dan, claire and sam in attendance. It was so excellent even the milos and b-jamin both quite happily eat their roast chickens, leaving certain parents disappointed at the lack of left-over roast potato and/or yorkshire pudding.

The journey home is fairly uneventful, and when we get back there's just time to feed a chatty blond baby pasta and cheese, let him splash in the bath and put him to bed.

With almost nothing in the fridge except some slightly dried mushrooms we have experimental pasta - kind of a combination of panther's patented garlic pasta and nigel slater's mushroom pasta. It's okay at best but what's more depressing is the routine of packing bags for work tomorrow. Boo!

Food of the Milos
Scrambled egg for breakker, roast chicken, potatoes and yorkshire pudding for lunch and cheese and pasta for dinner.

medieval curry

With the medieval festival in full-swing, the girls head off to get their hooves trimmed leaving the gentlemen folk to watch a combination of the tour de france, and england's brave boys seize the initiative in the ashes. Oh, and go to a couple of parks to entertain the smaller gentlemen.

Brilliantly lucy's mum offers to babysit saturday night, so we head out to the hotspots of tewkesbury - a bizarre combination of chavvy chavsters, mad old locals and people - seemingly all either dutch or former members of Yes - in medieval garb. It didn't get any better as we got drunker so we take refuge in the Nirala.

We have:
1 x bottle of Rose D'Anjou
4 x cobra beers
1 x king prawn madras (the anas)
1 x korahi (daviss)
1 x chicken pathia (russells)
1 x lamb madras (lucys)
popadums/tarka/mushroom bhaji/garlic naan/plain naan

It was marvellous!

Food of the Milos
ana's are up with the lark and the milos/davisss & ben this morning after I'd spent a bazillion hours trying to get him back to sleep after his 0430 alarm call. He starts the day with oatabix and banana, marmite sandwiches for lunch and jacket potato, cheese and beans for dinner. Plus the usual intake of raisins and, for one day only whilst dads are in charge, some french fries crisps and some of my bacon and mushroom breakfast roll.

medieval pizza

Off to Tewkesbury for a weekend with the Baxendale-Taylors, however before we get there two controversial things occur:

1. I manage to chip one of the milos teeth, cut his nose and graze his elbow. I didn't do it on purpose - we were running with him in the pram, and stopping suddenly, which he liked! Unfortunately I forgot I hadn't clipped him in and on the third stop he kept going. He wasn't happy, and neither was his mummy.

2. We decide to take a risk and head down in the evening banking on the milos will sleep in the car and then transferring him to bed when we get there. Of course this doesn't happen and it's wiggles, singing and chatting away for the entire journey. Still, at least he's forgotten about his injuries, and was more keen on seeing ben, lucy and davisss than getting some kip.

Once we get him to bed, we have some amazing davisss taylor pizzas with the most crispy bases. Lord knows how he does them...

Food of the Milos
Having turfed him out of the pram I'm less than convinced he's going to eat anything but surprise surprise, he gobbles down some defrosted spicy parmesan meatballs, followed by summer pudding. Then a pot of raisins on the journey down, and some strawberries and raspberries.

sources
crispy based pizzas - tratatoria de'lla taylorino. I recommend the olive and mushroom.

roast chicken and salad

My much heralded round of golf with Des finally dawns. Whilst we're hacking around Duke's Meadows (and I'm picking up £6 winnings for closest to the pin), I leave the chicken gently roasting away in a variation of Simon Hopkinson's brilliant recipe.

The one thing I overlooked was the fact by the time I got back at 2200 military hours, my lovely wife and partner is collapsed on the sofa, having only sustained herself with sauvignon blanc and doritos. Oh well, at least I won £6.


sources
roast chicken - Roast Chicken and Other Stories, Simon Hopkinson