Chicken, Chocolate and Head lice

There are a few things they do not tell you before you become a parent. Combing head lice out of your own hair (after catching it from your daughter who caught it at nursery) on a Friday night is one of them. It never crossed my mind when I held my beautiful baby girl in my arms for the first time that I'd be spending a Friday evening delicing my hair! Completely grossed out, I became obsessed with the process and went to bed at about 1:00am, lice free, thanks to Hedrin (The "one application lice killer"). Anyway, I am sure that is a little more information than most of you needed, but I blame the fact that I completely forgot to prepare the dessert for our Fat Saturday, the night before as the recipe instructed, on my preoccupation of ridding myself and my family of this disgusting infestation. But like I said, parenthood is full of surprises.

Last night Stefan and I got to bed far too late. We were both very tired when Ella, our youngest, decided to wake us up at 6:00 am this morning. That is another thing they don't warn you about: No more lazy Sunday mornings. We must definitely start our Saturday evening's cooking earlier next week, cause today has been a very long day. It is just so much fun to have a "grown up" evening that we forgot about the time. Listening to music in which the lyrics do not describe a buses wheels going around and around or begging us to clap our hands if we are happy and we know it. Spotify is just great, all the classics and all free! Wonderful invention.

But I digress, what was on the menu last? Aha! It was indeed a Fat Saturday, although it did not contain as much cream as I first envisaged. I opted for cheese instead, lots and lots of cheese. I love the stuff, any shape, make or form, so I chose a three course meal, that contained three different types of cheese. It was a cheesy feast.

For starters: Mushroom and Haloumi skewers on the BBQ. You may wonder why we are cooking everything on the Weber, but here in the UK we make use of every opportunity we can get to BBQ. Summer is almost over and then we will spend many a winter night wishing to light a fire again, so while we still can, we are making the most of it. The Skewers were very easy to make and a great starter. As I said before, I was preoccupied the Friday evening, so I only let the ingredients marinate for half an hour, but it was still good. I think I will however, in future, do it the night before, just so the flavours can really infuse the ingredients. A very delicious snack indeed.

Marinated the mushrooms, courgettes, red onions
in garlic, lime juice and coriander

Make a few kebabs and cook on the BBQ

Kebabs for two

I am particularly proud of the main course I selected: Stuffed Chicken Breast with Parma ham and a Red Pepper and Cherry Tomato sauce. Chicken breasts are notorious for being dry and I seldom order them in restaurants. I find them difficult to cook whole: too long and they are dry, too short and you die of some sort of food poisoning. I was going to give it a try anyway, and selected a recipe that guaranteed loads of flavour and moisture. The chicken breasts were stuffed with mozzarella and cherry tomatoes and then wrapped in parma ham. We made sure that our chicken was free range and organic. Stefan and I saw a movie about two weeks ago: Food Inc. It was scary stuff. I vowed never to eat a Big Mac hamburger again. Have you seen what McDonalds do to their meat? I also took a pledge never to eat or feed my family chicken that was not free range or organic ever again. I was never a great believer in the whole organic thing, but after seeing what they do to our food, especially meat, I am now a devout Organiee. Even if this means that we only eat meat once a week.

With Ella asleep and Mia playing Snow White-Snow White, I got to prepare the organic breasts earlier the afternoon. It was not as hard as I thought it would be, but PLEASE do not cut right through the chicken breast as I did with the one. A very blond moment! You are supposed to make little pockets by making a small incision on the side of the breast and then stuff with the mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. I managed to save the breast, because of the parmaham wrapping. It kept the whole thing nicely together, otherwise I would have cried. Organic, free range chicken is NOT cheap!

Me in action

Stuff chicken breasts with mozzarella and cherry tomatoes

Wrap in Parmaham

Serve on Potato Rosti
(My very bad attempt at food styling!)

We made Potato Rosti as an accompaniment. Because of the starter we decided to add no extra veg and I am glad we didn't, we would have been stuffed. This is a really good dish and I will make it again, however t I will reduce our cooking time, We were so scared that it was going to be raw that we overdid it a little, it was not dry, but could have come off about 5 minutes earlier. I'll stick to the cooking instructions next time.

Dessert: Tiramisu! I told you it was a very FAT Saturday. Nigella of course always helps when it comes to sweet things. We tried her traditional tiramisu, but with rum, not Baileys. It worked well. However, we couldn't finish it. It was too much. Stefan had the rest for breakfast this morning. He had no idea that he would be playing "hide the glass slipper" a few moments after that, but as I said, parenthood is full of surprises.

Tiramisu

Next week we are having friends round for our Saturday feast. So much pressure! We decided that we are all going to help prepare the food, the question is just what to choose. Stefan is going to have a hard time!

Until next week...