Birthday and Present, Book.

Now I am in to birthday countdown. Saturday we had a kind of special meal with fillet steak and port wine sauce accompanied by baked potato and Petits Pois a la Française which is an old favourite and which I haven’t done for a long time as it is somewhat high in calories. Matt also phoned his daughters to thank them and their families for the birthday present. Turned out his youngest had gone dog racing with a bunch of her girlfriends. That will be a new departure for her. Something I have never done although I often used to go to the horse races. Her poor hubby was all on his own for the evening as none of the kids were home either.  It turns out that the card Matt got with all the restaurant logos was made by him. He apparently worked through my blogs to find the names of restaurants we liked then went on their websites to get their logos. Very clever, but a lot of work. Matt keeps talking about going out for a meal on them (kids) on Wednesday night but of course we are going to the Mandarin for his free lunch on Wednesday. I am hoping he doesn’t decide he wants to go out on Thursday evening as he knows nothing about the bowling party. We normally don’t go out to eat at the weekends because it is usually too busy.

I just finished reading Defying Reason by Elizabeth Seckman who is a friend. I helped with a bit of proofing. It turns out this is a series about a particular family, The Coulter Men, bur I have to tell you, I didn’t mean to start reading it yet, but just checked out that I could read it on my laptop and then couldn’t stop reading. I finished it in two days and enjoyed every minute of it. I am not good in genre allocations but assume it would be classified as romance which I do not read very often, but I really think I will read the other books in this series. Defying Reason is not yet released, but if you like romantic fiction, I can highly recommend it. Very well written. Of course the fact that Elizabeth borrowed my name for her principle female character did help a bit.

This is Nigella Lawson’s version of Petits Pois a la Française. I never put stock in mine and nowadays I usually cook them in the microwave.

Petits Pois a la Francaise

Recipe courtesy of Nigella Lawson

 

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

• 3 small or 2 fat scallions, finely sliced
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 drop garlic-infused oil (or any oil really)
• 1 Little Gem (Butterhead) lettuce, shredded
• 2 cups frozen petits pois
• 1/2 cup hot chicken stock (concentrate or cube and hot water is fine)

Directions

Cook the scallions in the butter and oil until soft. Stir in the shredded lettuce, and when it is wilted add the frozen peas and stock.
Cook at a robust simmer, uncovered, until everything is tender and the liquid flavourful and reduced.

Have a great day