Friday Night Pizza (by Jo Girl)

It's been a long week, with lots of things going on from working away to debating competitions to cheese tastings.  Our quality time together has been fairly rushed of late, which is unlikely to change as we head into Christmas.  This means that when we get a Friday evening in together, we just want to relax and have fun, rather than get obliterated.  We certainly are getting old!

So Friday night this week was a chicken and chorizo pizza with chips and home made remoulade, followed by mince pies with blue cheese and a viewing of Up!

Starting with the food, who wouldn't want to have chicken and chorizo pizza, with peppers mushrooms and jalapenos?! We also received a celeriac in our veg box last week.  It went pretty well in soup, but whenever we go to France I have to have remoulade, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to try a homemade version.  Made with mayo, Dijon mustard, lemon and capers, it was pretty good but a little heavy on the moutarde!  However, Joe usually doesn't like remoulade and I have won him over so it was a win!

Joe was also on mince pie duty, having been disappointed in his effort last week.  This time he used the homage 2 fromage night so inspire some blue cheese mince pies, which were really good - that salty cheese brings out the flavour of the mince meat really well!

Post dinner entertainment was a viewing of Up, which I had never seen before.  It was highly recommended by Wolf and Gelt last week, and I must admit I absolutely loved it (even if it made me a little teary - don't tell anyone!).  If you have not seen this film, I can only suggest you find a copy and settle down to watch it, it's brilliant.

Remoulade

Chicken and chorizo pizza

A close up - chicken, chorizo, peppers and jalapenos.  Yum.

Joe's plate - complete with slightly burned chips.  Oops.

Blue cheese mince pies

And the finished mince pies.  Very tasty too.

Thursday - Homage2Fromage @ Dock Street Market (and dinner)

Twitter is a great thing and I will not hear otherwise! How else would I hear about great events like the monthly Homage2Fromage that is basically a club for cheese lovers organised by enthusiastic Yorkshire folk - I'll let Millies explain more here.

Jo had plans already for the evening, so I headed to the Blue Cheese evening with Adam Work who was keen to come along but perhaps a little skeptical about eating blue cheese mince pies and blue cheese ice cream!

He needn't have worried; it was a great event with crackers, walnut bread and a couple of very tasty Pudsey Pickles to accompany the 5 different cheeses on offer. It was also a chance to put some faces to names of some fellow foodie tweeters, particularly Dine and the Manor whose supper club we are attending in 2012 and Mike from Indieices who makes the most excellent ice creams from his Kitchen just round the corner from us!!....all in it I had a really good time and Homage2Fomage gets a double thumbs up.

Work Adam stuffing his face

Indieices Mike

His blue cheese ice cream sample 10/10!

 I headed home for about 8.30pm and Jo had kept dinner warm for me - I am well looked after! Fajitas, wraps and all the sides!!!

Wednesday - Chops, Chips & Vegetables

Jo has just given me some ear-ache about me (in her opinion) neglecting the blog.....well not anymore!!!

Last nights dinner made made by my fair hand......LAMB CHOPS, HOME MADE OVEN CHIPS WITH CARROTS AND SWEETCORN!!!!! There will be a more fun blog post tomorrow.....

Tuesday Back to Reality (Jo Girl)

So unfortunately my celebrations of my debating triumph (promise that is the last mention!) were short lived - I was back in Manchester today which meant an early start!  I can definitely tell that Winter is coming fast - gutted - I was hoping the snow would hold off at least until after Christmas!  It was cold and damp in Manchester (although I was not battered by hailstones, unlike yesterday!).  We could also see snow falling on the moors from our court which is definitely a sign that the Indian Summer is over!

Anyways, late nights as always mean quick dinners and tonight was no exception!  A hastily put together prawn and cashew stir fry, with Japanese soba noodles and organic veg.  I love stir fries because they are so healthy and you can put in so many flavours: cashews and prawns are definitely a winner for me!  Heated with a little chilli and ginger, it was yummy!

The stir fry

And again - a close up!

Monday - Jo is the Debating Champ of Leeds!!!

On Mondays and Tuesdays I usually work late - in the recruitment world 5pm till 7pm is the best time to speak with the candidates that you want place into jobs and get juicy bits of information from! Jo was in the final of a debating competition as one half of team Ford and Warren (other half being Work David), against three other teams from high profile law firms in Leeds. The event took place in a very swish part of Malmaison and was hosted by James of Michelsberg Tailoring based in the very fancy Victoria Quarter - his blog and some background on the event can be found here.

As I said, Monday would normally be a late one but I decided that I would cut off a little early to go and see Jo in the debate, with no idea what to expect as a non legal eagle!

I am not going to go into a huge amount of detail as this is a light-hearted blog, but there were 4 teams of 2, split into 2 teams of 4 with the motion "this house believes East is better than West....." Jo was arguing against the motion. It was really fun to watch: I  was pretty impressed as they were only given a few minutes to get their points together and the hour debating was all free-styling!....see my tweets about Jo from during the event - look bottom up!;

After over an hour of heating debating, the judges went away to decide on the winning team, and the overall individual winner. The team award went to Pinsent Masons but they judges were all unanimous that......

JO WAS THE BEST INDIVIDUAL SPEAKER AND THE OVERALL WINNER!!!!!

Obviously I was very proud that she had done so well (and relieved that I had turned up!!).....below is a picture of Jo and the judges:

The best bit was the Jo won, but second best was that the prize is a bespoke suit from James Michelberg which will be my suit for our wedding - get in!!!!!!......Thanks baby!x

Oh yeah - here is dinner....beans on a bagel:

Sunday Lunch at Fazenda

Back in April, our first ever blog review was of Fazenda in Granary Wharf.   We had a great time, and decided to revisit it this weekend for a bit of pre-Christmas cheer!  Admittedly Fazenda hasn't really embraced the Christmas spirit as yet, but a good lunch and some booze was fun anyway.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing about the food, save to say we really enjoyed it.  If you want a bit more info, check out the original review. As we were there for lunch, the choice of salads and meats was smaller than in the evening (and it costs about £7 less) but we all enjoyed some good food.  I wasn't a huge fan of the pork, which seemed to be cooked with cheese and was a little odd, and a bit over cooked, but the joy of Fazenda is that if you don't like it, you can have something else!  The staff were also very attentive and made sure we were properly looked after. 

Some form of meat in pastry thing - very nice though!

An Argentinian Malbec and a Modelo - perfect

The salad bar

A man with meat

Chips - the first of many portions - these were very good!

Chicken wrapped in bacon - a fave

Chicken thighs

Sausages

Joe's amaretto coffee

Petit fours

And our wonderful lunch companions - The Wolf and Gelt

Saturday Crispy Pheasant

So as regular readers of our blog may have realised, after a night out I generally suffer fairly badly the next day.  Well, even though I thought I hadn't drunk that much on Friday, I was still definitely feeling it on Saturday morning!  Definitely getting old now....

The good thing is, I now know how to get over my hangovers - more sleep, tea, and spicy food.  So cue a proper fusion evening - because Saturday was also designated pheasant eating night!  I did some research, found out that there were some Asian pheasant recipes out there, so decided on crispy pheasant with plum sauce.  Being slightly dubious of our pheasant butchering skills, I brined the bird in salt and sugar water, citrus fruits and spices, before roasting it.  The end result was pretty good - moist breasts, fairly crispy skin, served up with pancakes, homemade plum sauce, duck spring rolls (bought in case the pheasant didn't work - and we ate them anyway!) and a super spicy cucumber and cashew salad.  All in, I was pleased!

Crispy pheasant

Home made plum sauce

Shredded pheasant

Spicy cucumber and cashew salad

Duck pancakes - naughty!

Joe's rolled pancakes - not so spectacular!