Friday 6.30 until Sunday 6.30. Two days of the shorts – I love it.
Friday night supper is quick and easy – I never show off on a Friday – best to start simple and build up over the weekend to a climax at Sunday lunchtime. So this time it’s sausages and mustard-mashed potato.
Saturday morning and it’s off to the shops to get food for the weekend, then back for a really easy breakfast of pain au chocolat and croissants for the kids – smoked mackerel and buttered toast for me (although William steals half of it). Then off to Play Space – a rubber-clad indoor playground full of single parents desperately trying to snatch a few peaceful moments over a luke warm cup of machine-made crappucino. Still – the kids love it…
Saturday lunch and it’s the shorts favourite –
Chicken goujons in pitta with salad and a sweet chilli dressing.
Cut the chicken into strips and drop into a bowl with one beaten egg. In the meantime make some breadcrumbs from any left-over white bread or baguette and add tarragon, flour, salt and pepper. Pull the chicken out of the egg and roll around in the breadcrumbs then place in a hot frying pan with a couple of mm of olive oil. Fry for five mins on each side and then serve in toasted pitta with the salad and sweet chilli sauce. They love it…
After lunch and I’m watching them create weird miis all afternoon on the wii – mainly obese ones called fat kid, fat lady, fat girl etc – what is it about kids and fat people??
Saturday Supper – the X-factor excitement builds as we approach Saturday evening, only to be briefly dampened by a dismal firework display courtesy of a Tesco firework family pack – never again – next time I’ll go back to the local guy who makes his own rockets and bombs. Fairly hit and miss on the safety front but considerably more exciting – and it’s only once a year isn’t it?
Garlic bread with tomato and basil
Half fill a small mixing bowl with plain flour, add a sachet of yeast to half a mug of warm water and mix them together with a little salt, sugar and a good glug of olive all. Mix it all together and knead with floury hands for about five minutes than leave it in
a warm place while the oven warms up to 250c (with a large baking tray warming up inside). In the meantime chop three cloves of garlic finely and mix with a really good chunk of butter, salt and pepper. Chop a handful of plum tomatoes and put into and bowl with a handful of chopped fresh basil, another good glug of olive oil, a tiny splash of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.
Get the dough, split into two and roll one piece out and place on the hot tray pricking it and rubbing olive oil all over. Put it in the oven for about five minutes, take it out and cover with the garlic butter then put back into the oven for another five minutes.
Take it out, cut it into pieces and cover with the tomato and basil. Shorts destroyed in seconds… twice…
Next stop Simon Cowell…
dad at the weekend 