Blog

Tonight Mike’s ingredients are:

Steak
Artichokes
Mushroom
Potato
Onion

I wonder what he will do

On Sunday we jumped on our bikes for the first time in over 5 months and cycled 40 kms of steep hills to Swanage and back. It wasn’t actually too hard and we both think our daily walk/run up Paku has made us quite fit. Mike also had the camera and big lens on and I still had trouble keeping up with him in places (yes I am admitting this ex-smoking, ex-exercise-phobe is actually fitter than me!).

The Swanage Pier:

Old Harry Rocks

Eating egg sandwiches and enjoying the view:

Ninas painting:

Eating egg sandwich in front of Ninas painting:

There are more people on the beach here on this chilly day than there is on Tairua beach in the height of the summer season:

Masterchef night has started at our place. This is a Wednesday night thing where we buy a set of ingredients for the other person to cook something with them. There are just few rules.

1. We can buy no more than 5 ingredients
2. We can spend no more than £5
3. At least one ingredient has to be something we have never cooked before.
4. Pantry items are allowed (e.g. spices, garlic, stuff like that)

Anyway we thought this would be a bit of fun to try cooking new things.

Last night it was Mikes turn. I was nice to him and bought him these simple ingredients for his first attempt.

Chicken drumsticks
Mushrooms
Cous Cous (We have never used this in cooking before)
Rocket

And he came up with this – it’s not the best photo, but it was yummy and very tasty.

Here is Mikes recipe:

Mike talking now

I decided to make my version of ‘Spicy Chicken Couscous’

Ingredients

couscous
olive oil
1 chopped onion
chicken drumsticks
sliced almonds
curry paste
mixed fruit mix
1or 2 Coronas

I prepared the couscous by adding 150mls of boiling mushroom stock (well, water from soaking some porchini mushrooms from the night before). This I left to cool for later on.

Having discovered we had no curry paste I had to make my own.

Ingredients

1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
some oil
squeeze of lemon juice
2 tspn ground cumin
1 tspn ground turmeric
1 tspn freshly ground black pepper

These were all put into the food blender and blitzed untill they resembled a rough paste. If I had been orgainised I should have made the paste before the couscous and also made the couscous while the chicken was cooking. Oh well thats the benefit of hindsight.

Method

1. I softly cooked the chopped onion in a pan (2-3 minutes)
2. Then added the flesh from the chicken thighs and cooked for about 10 mins until tender and no longer raw.
3. Then the sliced almonds and curry paste were added and cooked for a further minute.
3. This was then removed from the heat and the couscous and mixed fruit stirred in.

The dinner plate was dressed with the rocket and the spicey chicken and couscous served was then added.

The Coronas were used for lubrication during the cooking and are an optional item that can be replaced with a glass or 2 of wine.

Bon apertite Jo.

We are now back in the UK and the weather is lovely and sunny. It’s a little chilly though and shorts and t-shirts are still in my backpack (yes I still haven’t unpacked yet!)

We didn’t get our flight upgrade so we were cram packed in economy right behind the bulkhead seats with all the screaming kids. But for some reason I was so chilled out none of this bothered me. I managed to sleep well and watched a few movies.

Here are some film reviews, bearing in mind that long haul flights are not the best place to review films.

Slumdog Millionaire

This is about a kid who won millionaire and had to justify how he knew all the answers by going through his life history.

Well this has to be the boringest movie I have ever tried to watch. I managed to sit through 10 mins of it when I got bored and switched to something else.

Because of the good reviews I thought I should attempt another 10 mins. Got bored switched to another movie.

Then I even went back for more torture by trying another 10 mins, and finally gave up in disgust.

Mike gave up after the first 5 minutes.

Australia

This film is highly recommended if you are an insomniac. I had the best flight sleep ever as I passed out watching this boring load of crap.

Mike managed to watch the whole thing but also said it was boring and not worth me trying to watch the finish of it.

Marley and Me

Starring Jennifer Aniston and that guy from Armageddon, and some ugly mongrel mutt.

Its about Jennifer and that guy from Armageddon getting married and having this horrible mutt that wont behave. It was more drama than comedy and that guy from Armageddon tried very hard to make it into a soppy movie, but his attempts were almost laughable.

I could not get attached to this dog and if he were mine I would have dumped him on the side of the road years ago, so when he died it was like “get over it you guys, this isn’t even sad”.

Anyway, a rubbish movie in my opinion and not even funny.

Run Fatboy Run

Starring that guy from Spaced and Phoebes russian ex-boyfriend from Friends.

This was about that guy from Spaced leaving his gorgeous bride at the alter, then trying to win her back but she had already moved on with Phoebes russian ex-boyfriend from Friends (who by the way had a really fit bod!)

It was watchable and that’s all I have to say!