Quiet weekend at home

This weekend was the first time since I started work that I actually got to spend the weekend at home, as opposed to navigating my way around the UK, sitting and standing on this train and the next. I'd been looking forward to it since the weekend before, therefore you can imagine what a long week it's been. My midweek was taken up with long days at the office, and a couple of social events which meant that I only spent Monday and Wednesday night at home. Getting up in the morning has been very difficult.

Anyway, onto the weekend. We went out for a few drinks on Friday night with some work friends of the boyfriend and spent a rather enjoyable time (oops...four pints worth) in a pub we're growing to love on the Strand. It's nice and cheap, and have a lovely cider on tap. We decided that we'd order a takeaway on the way home, and that took us to the end of the night. So nice to spend a Friday night in my own bed, but the highlight was definitely waking up the next morning, as I got to have a lie-in!!

As lie-ins go, it wasn't the most adventurous one - I woke up at 8.30 am!! But that meant I had plenty of time to catch up on those final episodes of Trueblood that I had  been saving for just such an occasion. And that lead on to a wonderful, cheeky brunch (if I may say so myself), with potato smileys, sausage, bacon, beans and a fusion of Northumbrian and Maltese cuisine in the form of grilled stotty topped with cherry tomatoes, garlic, gbejna and olives. Top notch!!

Look at those cute smileys!!

A happy bf with his brunch

 In between preparing all this yumminess, I pulled together an olive bread, which I've been planning to make for absolutely ages. I wanted a loose crumb, so I left the dough to knead in the Kenwood for a good half an hour, constantly adding olive oil to moisten it up. It rose beautifully over the course of the morning, and I managed to braid it and twist it into a wreath shape. I baked it later in the day and, even though we were out in the garden at the time, we could smell all that delicious olivey goodness filling the house with the tastiest smell you can imagine.

Olive bread wreath

 We had to do one of the things I absolutely loathe doing on a Saturday afternoon, which is the weekly shop at Asda. We were getting rather desperate as we'd done the last shop a couple of weeks ago, and I desperately needed some carrots in the house. Also, boyfriend got it into his head that he wanted to have a go at baking this weekend and he wanted to make parkin, a recipe his aunt and uncle had sent him. Parkin, for some reason, contains beer and dark treacle (it doesn't particularly appeal to me) so we needed to buy those. We also wanted to buy some things for the garden, and actually Asda had quite a nice selection of plants that could be planted outside and potentially survive the winter.

After we eventually carried all our shopping home, we spent a good hour in the garden (well, I was in and out), doing some weeding and planting all our new bulbs and plants. I've put in a few pictures here of boyfriend standing next to the two little bushes we bought, and the beautifully coloured heathers we also picked up. We bought a ton of daffodil bulbs too and boyfriend did a great job of getting those in the ground. Hopefully they'll flower nicely come spring. Oh yes, and we also bought a curry plant for my herb garden!! It's incredible - you put your nose to it and it has the most incredible smell of curry!! I couldn't believe it!! Now I just need to figure out how to use the plant in making curries...

Boyfriend post planting

Some heathers. Might buy a few more soon

My currently poorly populated herb garden.
Curry plant, rosemary and tomato plant

Daffodil bulbs neatly placed in a grid

After all that hard work, we needed a break, so we watched some Cooks Questions and I quickly prepared a pork tagine. It came delicious actually, and since I basically invented this recipe, I thought I'd include a brief version of it here:

Marinate boneless pork chops in a mixture of harissa, garlic, ginger powder and olive oil, for about thirty minutes. Sweat some onions and garlic in the tagine, then add the pork steaks with chilli flakes, ginger powder, harissa and turmeric. Also some salt and pepper. Then add chopped carrots, butternut squash and peppers, chopped dried apricots, flaked almonds and sultanas. Finally some chopped tomatoes and chicken stock, bring to the boil and stick the tagine in the oven. Done and done!! We enjoyed that with some fresh olive bread and the latest episode of Dr Who. I've never been a fan of that show, but with Peter Capaldi playing the doctor, I have been enjoying it a wee bit. It would be better without all the robots though...

Pork tagine

I woke up super early on Sunday morning and took off for the pool. I haven't had a chance to go swimming in the last couple of weeks, and really felt like doing some exercise. I only got fifty laps in (front crawl of course), but it was enough for a Sunday morning. And because the buses are so irregular on Sundays, I had time to pick up a hazelnut milkshake from Mendocino Cafe before getting home. So tasty, and full of calcium too!!

The rest of Sunday was simply a blur of non-activity. I discovered a special episode of Keeping Up Appearances on the telly (not the most modern program in the world but the escapades of the infamous Mrs. Bucket still make me roar with laughter), dealt with the packing for my trip to Sheffield and Leeds (Monday to Wednesday this week) and prepared Maltese bragioli for dinner. Those do come absolutely excellent: minute steak wrapped around a mixture of pork sausage meat, bread crumbs, herbs and garlic, then braised in a tomato and vegetable sauce for a good three hours. Potentially one of my favourite Maltese dishes, and so filling!! I highly recommend it!!

Parkin - bf's first bake. Yeah, I know it
looks like a giant hamburger...

 Finally, we went on a walk around town, stopped in the Leather Bottle for a couple of pints and watched the making of Blackadder (i.e. how all the series were made) with dinner. The perfect evening!!! :D

Bragioli, and tender as they come. Delish!!!