10/02/2008. I stir-fried some green vegies – bok choy and snow peas with onion and garlic, a cracking of fresh black pepper and a splash of soy sauce.

Jac made one of our old favourites, minchee, and we ate that with freshly cooked rice and the crisp stir-fried vegies.

11/02/2008. I bought a packet of gnocchi and a jar of stir-through sundried tomato and garlic pasta sauce. A very simple meal to prepare!

12/02/2008. Jac bought some lamb steaks from Farmer Jacks supermarket. They were called “lamb delights”. The “delight” bit may have been the little circle of stuffing in the middle of each piece of meat. Jac’s theory is that they were old chops with a little blob of stuffing placed where the bone had been. That little bit of stuffing was quite delicious (or is that delightful?)! It’s hard to spot it in the photo, but if you look carefully at the section near the top of the lamb you’ll see an irregular shape that’s a slightly different colour and texture to the rest of the chop. Jac served the lamb with fresh salad and some sauteed potatoes – she parboiled the potatoes, which she cubed and then sauteed in a pan with a little chopped spring onion and some cream. Those potatoes were fantastic – thank goodness for the leftover cream in the fridge that inspired Jac to create that side dish.

We didn’t do anything special for Valentine’s Day on the day itself – we saved that for the weekend (that post still to come). Jac baked a couple of chicken Kievs, which she served with salad. The Kievs were just frozen ones out of a box. They were a little unusual in that they consisted of breast meat as well as the “drumstick” part of the wing, and actually had the little wing drumstick bone in them.

The crumbed coating on the Kievs was deliciously crisp. The garlic butter inside was great and the chicken very tender and moist, but I would’ve loved the Kiev to be absolutely bursting with chickeny-ness and oooozing with garlic butter when I cut into it. There just seemed to be too much air in there! It was yummy though.

15/02/2008. We had panfried fish and salad. For something a little different, Jac tried a recipe from her Classical Italian Cooking cook book – macaroni salad with salami, which she served garnished with hard-boiled eggs and sliced cherry tomatoes. The recipe called for “medium tomatoes” but cherry tomatoes were all we had – and I prefer cherry tomatoes any way!

Jac served the fish with a green salad…

…on which I piled on the macaroni salad.