Staying Alive

Mmmmmmmmmm, more crabs today, they arrived alive but sadly didn't stay that way and I had the lovely task of sending them to Heaven, and tomorrow I've to put them into a salad with some avocado and tomato, oh no. They were absolutely huge, such a horrid way to talk about crabs but I could only fit 3 of them into my biggest pot, did the whole cold water thing and hopefully it wasn't too dire a death for them............

Having got the first degree murder part of my day out the way, it was then onto my recipes for the morning which were baked cinnamon, almond and butter apples, French omelettes (got it right on the second attempt, buggered about for so long trying to get it out of the pan looking like an omelette the first time that it was a little overcooked, think multi-tasking as a chopping board in it's spare time), lemonade and mushroom soup. My word, the frustration of the mushrooms, there was a veritable mountain of them on my chopping board and because it's not a blended soup you've to chop them finely and by that I mean almost to a pulp, it took ages!

It wad good though, lashings of cream and a mine's worth of salt but so good in the end and look at my apples, aren't they just too sweet, I was dead pleased with them.

I was in a new kitchen today but it was actually fine, although I couldn't find a freaking thing, so frutrating when I'd finally worked out where everything was in my first kitchen, all those sneaky little corners where you find dishes for plating up and obscure bits of equipment.

Afternoon demo was a bit gory this afternoon - Tom Duane, the local gamekeeper came and spoke to us about "furred and feathered game", so not my cup of tea - I prefer my duck gutted, plucked, roasted and preferably featuring as the main part of some wicked Asian dish - instead there were a variety of game birds, most of which I've never heard of, the ducks I knew but on top of that there were pheasants, snipe, woodcock, pigeon (who look so much better in Trafalgar Square than on my roasting tray) and teal. Anyway, bless their feathered feet, they were dead but still whole, so much easier to deal with when they don't appear at your work station still complete with feathers, feet and bill - you know what's coming next right? Removal of all of the afore mentioned body parts, and they had to be gutted and to be honest, it was all a bit gross - thank God, my partner and I somehow managed to score chicken tomorrow rather than any of chicken's less domestic friends which so works for me. On the down side, I'm stuck with crab - I knew it would come back to pinch me later - at least the death sentence part was done today and tomorrow I've just to somehow get the meat out of the crab, I'm going armed with a small hammer (which I may have to nick from my old kitchen since I have absolutely no idea where it lives in my new kitchen), so all in all I'm not feeling too friendly at the moment....................

The tasting session was fab though - roast kuku with herb stuffing and gravy, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, gravy, roast pots, rustic mashed turnips with caramelised onions, creamed celery (no one seems to like celery but it really doesn't matter as they say here "you'll be grand", it was a creamed version and the ratio of cream to celery was about a million to one), all sorts of crab salads, Summer pudding and Victoria sponge. Oh and there was this wicked chicken salad, baby gem lettuces and tarragon dressing, wicked - so looking forward to lunch tomorrow, all sorts of things I like, YAY!

So I'm on one of the crab salads tomorrow (which comes with homemade mayonnaise which, oh my God, I've to make, again), summer pudding (which has to be lined with sponge cake first) and a few veg dishes, not too bad, and no washing up duties tomorrow, double YAY!!

After demo was finished and I'd munched my way through all the kuku (and shunned his or her's wilder friends) I went to find myself an egg which I've written my name on and put into the incubator - if, and this is a big if, the dad of the Palais des Poulet has done his bit, in 21 days I'll have my own baby kuku - he better have done his whole fertilisation job, I know where he lives and he'll not be in my good books if 21 days of incubation love ends up in nothing.............and this won't be one for eating, just for being cute and running around the courtyard, haven't decided on a baba kuku name yet just in case my rooster turns out to have been a bit useless.

Got home and found the school dogs resident in our lounge, Heaven knows how they got in, they know a soft touch when they see one I tell you, negotiated themselves a 10 minute tummy tickle each and it wasn't hard, their rolling over paled in comparison to mine...........