Sunday 23 August 2015

Burger Rolls & Poole Pottery

I had a couple of minor disasters this weekend. Neither of them worthy of posting here, but together, I think they provide a small indication as to my growing over-confidence as I manage to continue to provide food that's both edible and what I intended.

Yesterday (Saturday), it was my turn to cook the evening meal. Doris had cooked burgers for lunch, so she asked me for something different. My daughters are with us this weekend, and Xena suggested Nachos. Now, Doris can't have Nachos due to a capsicum intolerance, so I helped Xena with the Nachos (well, with grating the cheese and over-endowing them with soured cream), and I had a look in the fridge for something for Doris.

Doris suggested that she would be happy finishing-off the burger buns, with some prawn mayo. We had fresh prawns (ready-peeled - I'm not daft!) in the fridge, and some lemon mayo, so I agreed to prepare this.

I found that we didn't have much mayo, so I decided to spread it on the buns like butter, rather than mix the prawns in the mayo in a separate bowl.

After spreading, I layered the prawns in the buns. After a couple of layers, they were looking unstable, so I simply bunged the rest of the prawns onto the plate beside the two buns.

Doris took the plate, and Xena started to laugh. I asked her what was so funny, and she told me that I had managed to mix up the buns, so Doris had bottom-prawns-bottom and top-prawns-top. When I went to apologise to Doris for this, they both laughed at me, saying that it's worse that I hadn't noticed, rather than it being intentional.

Today, again it's my turn to cook dinner (Doris toasted bagels for breakfast, and we skipped lunch). Pasta Bake is something that I believe I cook better than she does, and everyone usually seems to appreciate my pasta bake, so I couldn't go wrong.

Doris has recently inherited a dinner set of Poole pottery, so we've donated our old crockery to a local cafe that's just starting up (and serves great food, cooking everything fresh and baking cakes in full view of the customers), called Tin Kitchen, and we've replaced it with the Poole pottery. It's the Twintone range, Mushroom & Sepia design. The soup bowls are a decent size for a portion of pasta bake, and they fit onto saucers, so the fork can be placed beside the bowl rather than sticking out of it.

I picked four bowls and four saucers (one each) from the cupboard. I picked up the first bowl and filled it with pasta bake. I put it onto the first saucer and moved it across the counter. I picked up the second saucer and served pasta bake onto it. I looked around for a saucer on which to put it, and had an "oh bugger" moment.

Doris is asking me why I have served three bowls-on-saucers and one bowl-on-its-own (I've put the other saucer straight in the dishwasher).