Come dine with us!

So, Saturday evening we cooked a meal for my parents. You know how whenever you watch Jamie or Nigella and they talk about how they like really informal dinner parties where everyone just helps themselves from a steaming platter of something in the middle of the table? Yeah, that’s pretty much the opposite of how we do dinner parties. We like it formal. Multiple courses with matching wines. Cheese before pudding. 

This does mean that most of Saturday and a couple of precious Friday evening hours were spent in the kitchen, but I really don’t mind. I do honestly love cooking and I love cooking for other people. Although I do find sharing a kitchen with D to be quite a stressful business. He is a very precise cook whereas I am more chaotic and clumsy and tend to lose basic motor skills when feeling under pressure.

Particular highlights included D’s fantastic mussel and saffron soup – which is a recipe I’d love to blog for you if a) he lets me and b) it works out as reasonably WW friendly, and a rabbit in mustard sauce which I think mentioned in a meal planning post a couple of weeks ago when we did a practice run. The recipe we used for the rabbit is here – and I would recommend giving it a go if you can bring yourself to eat Bugs. Although the ingredient list makes it sound like it is going to be overpoweringly mustardy, it actually bakes down to quite a mellow flavour.

In the interests of accountability, I should make it clear that not a morsel was pointed. But a midweek Weigh In (capital W capital I) this morning showed me only half a pound up from the official number on Thursday, which I take to mean that not too much damage has been done.