mozzarella, peach, basil and parma ham salad

After last night's late night drinking Amaretto, eating fine foods and playing Shithead at Amanda and Greg's, we're surprisingly chipper this morning. Well I am. Ana, the treacherous dog, does about 20 minutes* child crowd control before disappearing off to Harry's room to sleep on the inflatable bed, leaving me and hop-along Greg in charge of children and sofa bed.

Due to the arrival of the Ocado man at some un-Godly hour today, we have to make a sadly swiftish exit from St Albans, but the upside means we manage to get into Richmond for some vital pre-holiday shopping, and an amazing ice cream on the Green from Gelateria Danieli. However, despite her extra lay-in, and the Milo-controlled injection of pretzel M&Ms, Ana has a slight dip.

The only way to jolt her out of cat nap is to lure her into the kitchen with one of her favourite salads, and a large glass of chilled rose...

Food of the Milos
Breakfast in St Albans, Lunch in Barnes, Dinner in the Garden - his life is like a really rubbish British Airways advert.
Breakfast: Mini choc-chip weetabix, followed by Marmite on toast;
Lunch: Ham, salami, a smoothie and a rice cake, followed by a mango sorbet from Danieli. And most of my strawberry cheesecake ice cream, and a significant amount of Ana's lemon sorbet.
Dinner: Leon chicken nuggets and home-made chips.

sources
mozzarella, peach, basil and parma ham salad - Delicious, 2005 now the Parsley Book
*I am, of course joking. She did loads whilst I snored away happily next to her.

chez mcpartlin

Having been an awful wife last year and forgetting to celebrate Greg's 40th birthday, this weekend we're heading to Stalbans for a belated-big-four-oh-on-time-forty-first birthday party.

With the shindig in mind, myself and Milo head out early doors to get Greggy a present and Ana goes to Zumba to get into shape before the influx of McPartlin-supplied carbohydrates.

The kids have a fantastic time running around the garden, however the birthday boy isn't in such good form suffering, as he is, from an attack of his rare broccoli-induced gout. It doesn't stop him hobbling around the kitchen cooking a fantastic meal though, which is just as well as Ana and Amanda weren't helping, they were in the lounge drinking fizzy wine and reading Hello!/OK!

For dinner we had really nice tomato, anchovy and celery salad with crusty bread, followed by saffron-poached fish, with parmesan and tomato baked aubergine, and then a really dense almond tart. And loads of Amaretto, small cups of coffee and more wine.

It was a most felicitous evening although if I could change one thing, it would be we never play shithead again, if only so I never have to see smugness like this again:

Food of the Milos
Brunch: The usual Saturday morning nibbles, followed by scrambled eggs with some of Hannae's dad's Gravadlax, on toast. Swingeing cuts, what swingeing cuts?
Dinner: Amanda and Hop-Along Greg cooked up a fine feast of sausages, mash and beans, which was accompanied by much small boy foolishness.

feta and mint tabbouleh with crispy chorizo

Despite the jolly blue spoon-wooden spoon-green bowl vibe in the image, I've got a right cob-on by the time I get home today. There are a number of possible reasons (Milo waking up in the night, having a pint with the boss at lunchtime, annoying people on the roads) but none I can categorically pin the blame on.

By the time I get home, Ana's halfway out of the door on her way to Nursery Book Club and I'm less-than-inspired to cook anything. Or indeed watch anything, listen to anything or read anything. All I'm good for is knocking up enough salad for two plates tonight (for me) and lunch for all tomorrow:

(Not really) Interesting aside: This time I made it, at Ana's insistence, with cous cous. Not that she ate it, when she returned, drunk, at midnight, which wasn't bad given she hadn't actually finished the book, and didn't want to go.

Food of the Milos
Breakfast: We're up late today, so he only had milk before nursery, and then really eat anything at Julia's - some porridge and a cracker with some pate;
Lunch: Fish Pie (although he didn't eat the peas), followed by custard;
Dinner: Tonight Ana gets creative and the two of them make Leon's chicken nuggets, mini broccoli and sweetcorn. It's a massive success!

sources
feta and mint tabbouleh with crispy chorizo - Delicious, May 2011, p23
chicken nuggets - Leon: Naturally Fast Food, p168

peter gordon's warm pea, broad bean, fennel and herb roasted sweet potato salad

Experimentation ahoy! Months and months ago Brenda gave us a Peter Gordon recipe book called Salads: The New Main Course, which looks quite dry and therefore has never been used. Until this week that is, as we're scrabbling around for new salad dishes to augment the usual Mediterranean/Mozzarella, Peach and Ham/Rice and Chicken and Sesame Chicken salad axis.

However whilst relatively simple to make, this dish is a little bit pfaffy, all of which equates to demi-high levels of stress in the kitchen.

Despite my unjustified high horsing it turns out pretty well, and completely not what I'd expected. I thought the fennel and lemon juice would totally overwhelm the peas and broad beans, but in fact the combination of herby roast sweet potato goes really well with the parmesan and beans, and the fennel and lemon only come through later.

It's a keeper I think, and I think it'll be better next time as we're coming into the season and we can have fresh, podded beans rather than the canned variety I got this time. It's probably worth getting some frozen as well, so we can have it any time.

Food of the Milos
Breakfast: Choc Krispies, toast and butter;
Lunch: Chicken and veg, cake and two yoghurts. Why won't he eat yoghurts at home, but eats loads at Julia's?
Dinner: Veg bolognese

sources
warm pea, broad bean, fennel and herb roasted sweet potato salad with parmesan dressing - Peter Gordon, Salads: The New Main Course, p45

tomato, red onion and creme fraiche tart with salad

For some reason today is a complete blank. I blame the bank holiday (and Pippa's dress), but what I do know is whilst having the full complement of ingredients for the tart, we've only got leaves for the salad, which leaves (ho ho!) me slightly non-plussed how to create a tasty salad.

As it turns out, the chance discovery of walnuts in the cupboard, and some walnut oil, inspires the creation of a sort of waldorf salad.

sources
tomato, red onion and creme fraiche tart - Delicious, 2005 or 2006, now the Parsley Book

mediterranean halloumi salad

With Ana out blitzing her bikini tonight and nowt on TV until Glee, I've got a spare hour to potter about watering the garden, sorting out my bag for work tomorrow and unpacking the rest of the weekend's detritus.

The genius of dinner is it only takes as long as it takes to grill some halloumi, open a bottle of chilled rose and slice some extra ripe tomatoes, which have spent the day warming on the sunny kitchen windowsill. Is there any left-over for lunch tomorrow? Is there bobbins...

sources
mediterranean halloumi salad - Delicious, June 2010, p24

the royal wedding weekend

It's a beautiful sunny weekend and everybody is piling into London for the Royal Wedding, so naturally we're leaving town for the South Coast, and a weekend of hot, nanny action.

On Friday, whilst the ladies are oohing and ahhing over Kate's dress, the gentlemen are assembled in Jonny Osborne's garden putting up a shed, drinking, staring out over the channel and oohing and ahhing over Pippa. A bit later my brother - a trained chef no less - fires up the barbie and spends the rest of the afternoon flipping burgers and turning sausages. This tastiness is later supplemented by John Ashton who seemingly keeps pulling braces of poussin out of his pocket. I still need a couple bowls of my mum's chilli when we get home, mind...

The following day is another scorcher, so we head out in the sun for a trip to Howletts with my mum, Danny, Dylan and Michaela. I'd like to say Milo was well into the tigers and snow leopard, but in fact he was only interested in the elephants and the gorillas. With our monkey in bed, full of ice creams, picnics and macaroni cheese, we swing over to Clokey & Liz's for curry. And loads of silly booze, *obvs*.

Sunday is infinitely more relaxed: Mum takes Milo to mini rugby, Ana packs and I fix dad's laptop, before heading to Sandgate for fish and chips on the beach. Brilliantly not only does Dad almost manage to fall into the mighty rolling ocean, he manages to split his trousers trying to escape a soaking.

Knackered, slightly sun-burned and with an emergency Nanny-rinsing stop-off at Baby Gap, we head home, laden down with left-over chilli for tea. Hurrah for Nanny!