Me cook? OK I'll try

So the missus has been doing twelve hours shifts this week. This means she's hardly seeing our daughter and I'm having to cook, something that is usually left to her because, well, because she's good at it, where as I'm not confident.

I decided to try my hand at a stew, I figured it was pretty much prepare everything and chuck it in a pot on the hob and leave till its cooked, obviously stirring every so often. We do have a slow cooker, but it doesn't seem to thicken too well in there.

So anyhow, the stew turned out fairly well in the end (this was Tuesday evening), good enough for Missus to request I make another tonight, well, maybe she didn't want me to try my hand at making a curry just yet...

So here's what I did

440g diced beef (although substituted for diced pork tonight as the supermarket had no beef left)
2 medium carrots
3 large potatoes
1 parsnip
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
500ml of beef stock
400ml of chopped tomatoes
220ml of Guinness Draught
salt, pepper and herbs depending on your taste.

I cut all the carrots, parsnips and potatoes up into small chunks and chucked them straight in the pot.

Make a small mix of plain flour, pepper, herbs and salt then lightly covered the cubes of beef/pork in it.

Shallow fried in olive oil the beef/pork until it was slightly brown, then fried the onion and garlic alongside the meat until the onions were slightly soft, and chucked them in the pot.

Added the tin of chopped tomatoes, Guinness and Beef Stock and left on a low light for 2 and a half to 3 hours, or until I was satisfied with its thickness.

I then served it inside a large Yorkshire Pudding each (I cheated her and used Aunt Bessy frozen ones) with a chunk of French Baguette for dipping.

Admittedly on Tuesday, I burnt it a bit so some of the taste was lost,I was trying to find a heat on the stove that would cook it in time for Missus getting home, but ended up partially rushing it a little too much, luckily it was still edible, but as I stated earlier in this post, it must of been nice enough for her to ask for it again (either that or she was trying not to hurt my feelings), I enjoyed cooking and eating it anyway, which is a rarity as usually cooking seems to put me off my food. I even managed to cut and cook the onions without being blinded (I cannot cope at all with the stingy eyes onions give me).

"I'm a horsey"

Children's imagination's make me laugh. After waking Sprog up this morning, she insisted on bringing some of her My Little Pony's down for breakfast before I took her to school, this was fine, its normal for her to do this, although I wasn't expecing a whole rucksack full of ponies.

So anyhow, after saying goodbye to them, and goodbye to her mother who had only just returned from work, we headed off to school, which is about 10-15 minutes walk away. Immediately she shouted out "I'm a horsey" and proceeded to half skip, thus creating a sort of trotting motion, down the drive and this continued all the way to the school, even when I was holding her hand she'd be doing this. If she saw another child from her class, or the class next door (who are in the same "year" as her) she would shout "Neigh" at them.

When we arrived at school, she also decided to declare to her teacher that she was a horse before trotting and neighing through the door to take off her coat...

Oh what a night...

Had barely any sleep last night, and there's only one reason for it. Missus was ill, really rather ill. Unsurprising really, she's developed an intolerance to fast food, which is great, kind of.

So anyway, last night she was watching Casualty, we'd been out in town during the day and had paid a visit to Pizza Hut. She had a Salmon Pasta Bake thing and a couple of slices of my pizza, plus a small bowl of salad from the salad bar (she hadn't had any breakfast, so yeah, she was starving). Around the time Casualty started we were both getting hungry again, Sprog had had her tea (after eating a rather large Chicken Wrap meal and salad she just wanted some sandwiches...) and was in bed asleep. There was nothing in the freezer that I had the ability to cook and Missus was resting her feet after doing a group of 12 hour shifts at the hospital during the week. So, I thought "hmm baked potato from the 'Baked Potato Shop'" which was all well and good if their last delivery time was 9pm but they'd taken the phone off the hook at 8:30pm leaving us with the choice of going hungry, me running out in the cold to Sainsbury's to find something to cook, which would of left us eating some time after 10pm or phoning Andreas Takeaway for a a burger and kebab (she had the latter).

Unfortunately, Missus' stomach deciced that, whilst watching the second Death Note movie, that it wasn't too happy with what she'd eaten, and she spent half the night sat on the toilet with her head in a bucket. When that wasn't happening, she was trying to sleep whilst having an emergency bowl at close hand, right in the gap between our heads, so I spent half the night awake in fear that I would be thrown up on. Luvvly Jubbly.

Suppose it serves us right for going down that route and wasting money on crap food...

Looking forward to tonights Bangers N Mash with Guinness Gravy (and yes, thats gravy with guinness draught in)

Desktop update #3

I know I only changed it about a week ago, but found this one today after watching The Dark Knight for the first time last night. I'll go into my impressions of that tomorrow as its getting rather late now (waiting for Missus to finish what she's doing on Hatchlings on Facebook...)

Anyhow, this is what I'm using at the moment.

Christmas Eve!

Wow, that was easy! Sprog went to bed with no trouble whatsoever. Mind you, she did go over an hour later than normal...

Everythings done and out of the way too, Mince Pies are made, as are Cookies (Missus keeping Sprog entertained there) All the presents are under the tree, minus all the chocolate ones because of the dogs, there in the kitchen, as are the dogs presents. The Rats have had new hammocks made and Missus has strung freshly popped (plain) popcorn across their cages, and I'm happily drinking HobGoblin that was left out for Santa.



All that is left to do is hang Sprog's stocking on the back of her bedroom door to enable to have an extra five minutes in bed in the morning and its time for Missus and I to see in Christmas Day in our usual way.

Tomorrow will be less stressful for us than today has been, we're at Missus' Grandads, he'll pretty much have dinner all prepared and cooking away slowly when we arrive, she'll help dishing up and Sprog's Uncle will keep her entertained, that or she'll be in the garden on her new scooter.

I'm looking forward to it more than I have previous Christmases, which haven't been the most fun in recent years, however, there shouldn't be any problems this year and the three of us have a nice number of gifts each (of course, Sprog's outweigh ours by about 10:1). So all thats left is for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

The Devil in disguise...

We do alot of charity shop shopping, its great for picking up cheap books and Missus likes getting old material (usually bed spreads) from them in order to make into various things such as hammocks for her Fancy Rats. So whenever we're in town we pop into a few different charity shops, take a look and normally end up buying something, very rarely spending anything more than £5.

So yesterday we popped into Shelter, and Missus picked some material, Sprog was with us and she, as kids always do in shops, wanted a toy. She picked up a Firby, I began to cry inside, bought we bought it anyway, it only cost a £1 and it'll keep us happy.



Unfortunately I seem to be having a spell of bad headaches that won't shift just recently, so despite the fact she's had Coco (what the Firby has named itself) for less than 24 hours, I feel like throwing her (Sprog has stated its a girl) in the bin. Still, the person who had it before obviously took good care of it as its not really rude (Missus had one as a kid, her brothers taught it to swear) and has provided a couple of humourous moments, such as it burping whilst Sprog was having some supper before bed last night.

Ahwell, its Christmas Day tomorrow, so with all the stuff she's got waiting to open, maybe Coco will stay in her room like her other noisey toys. At least Mimi (one of our dogs) will be happy then as she seems to hate (or is at least scared) of it.

I'm sooo good at this blogging malarky!

Yup, after another lengthy break (ha! over a year!) I've remembered this existed and have come back.

So whats happened in the past year?

Stuff thats what. My little girl is now in full time education, and loving it! My missus is a Student Nurse proper, and is mostly loving it! and I'm trying to find a job, with not alot of luck to be honest.

We're in the build up to Christmas, and its feeling rather Christmasey for the first time in a long time, probably because the sprog is properly getting into it this year. She's had her Christmas party, play and fayre at school, she's visited Santa and we've been trying to hide all the presents around the house with, so far at least, quite a bit of success. The closest call so far has been a parcel arriving from my Dad at the weekend, she saw the big box, asked what it was and settled for the answer "nothing for you" and carried on doing whatever it was she was doing at the time.

We spent Halloween at Gulliver's Kingdom in Milton Keynes with my Dad, Step Mum, older Sister, her bloke and my two nieces, and despite the appauling weather, a good time was had by all.