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This post is number 111,111 in the Forum – I’m sure that you’ll all be delighted to know this.
Thank goodness you choose that number PB are aware that 11 is the most unlucky number there is; so 111,111 crickey watch out Sir my prayers are with you
Oh dear … so i’m 10,101 times unlucky eh? Hope you know loads of prayers.
Langstraat, brilliantly thorough and funny as hell! lol
Looking forward to many more (just be careful next time) :wink: :lol:
Well you egged me on there Food pun intended.
A Romantic Diner No.1 c1968
I remember the first time I prepared a romantic meal for my girlfriend, we were both eighteen and my parents were away for the weekend. We were alone at last.
I went to Birmingham’s Rackham’s Store to get us something special, something romantic and under a fiver. I intended to prepare a three course meal for the love of my life. I decided to do Avocado Prawn cocktail which was to define the 60’s and for the entree Pheasant in red wine. The sweet would be something I had seen on Television but had not yet tried, it looked delicious; Bird’s Angel Delight. She would be impressed.
I bought the largest Avocado and a tin of Prince’s Prawns and a tin of Baxter’s Whole Pheasant in red wine. The tin was almost as big as the cylinder on a Goblin vacuum cleaner.
I looked through Mom’s Bero cook book for recipe for the avocado and was disappointed not to find it mentioned but considering how new it was to Britain I decided to use my initiative and to kill two birds at the same time; I boiled it as if it were a goose egg. I placed the tin of pheasant and the avocado into our largest saucepan filled it to the brim with water (omitting salt) and brought it up to the simmer. I made a light piquant sauce for the prawns with some salad cream and a dash of tomato sauce. When I removed the avocado from the boiling water I realised I had made a mistake obliviously in my inexperience I had over cooked it, an easy mistake to make, it had turned to mush and gone a very, very dark. Even when the prawns were arrange and covered in pink sauce it failed to look appetising. Oh well, we would do without and go straight to the main. I had turned the Baxter’s tin over a few times to heat through the parts which were too big to be immersed and after an hour felt confident that it was ready. Mom had taught me that to make sure the contents of a tin were cooked you should always boil until the label comes off. I had another half an hour before my girlfriend was due so placed a tin of new potatoes and a tin a Morton processed peas in the water. I prepared the Angel delight and poured it into two wine glasses, opened a bottle of Asti Spumanti to release the gas and stop the bubbles from tickling our noses. I turned the gas fire on in the back room and found two part candles which we kept for power cuts, lit them and placed them on matching saucers. Suave eh?
The moment arrived and she came in wearing her favourite paisley Mary Quant look a like, a bit like Cathy McGowan, but accessible. I ushered her to her seat sweeping the newspapers to the floor (mom kept a tidy home and all rubbish was either under the table on chairs or under the sofa’s cushions)
I server the first course, neither of us liked the avocado and thought its reputation was greatly exaggerated the prawns were okay though. The pheasant was cooked to perfection the meat so tender it fell off the bone unfortunately whilst it was still in the tin. As it slid out onto the plates it pushed the tinned potatoes to one side artistically and mixed well with the processed peas. We both eat in silence. I’ve never seen this combination since, not even Ramsey has tried this combination maybe I should suggest it. I’m sure she was well impressed.
We enjoyed the Asti but the Angel Delight was best. I always thought of my girl as Angel Delight after that day ;)@langstraat wrote:
…she came in wearing her favourite paisley Mary Quant look a like, a bit like Cathy McGowan, but accessible.
:lol:
Langstraat you are if not one of the funniest people on here
Your true stoires are brill and i thought mine was good lol
You say Rackham’s in brum lol you would of been better going to lewises much cheaper and ther box of broken bickies was to die for lol
Keep up the post sweet heart :lol:
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My Dearest Langstraat
..I would like to congratulate you on your ability to entertain the people of this forum withyour autobiographical anecdotes. I have no doubt many a maxim could originate from within the ‘Bizarre World of Langstraat Series’. You had me in peals of laughter at the idea of boiling an Avacado, whist the your youthful entusiasm for romance made me sigh with admiration and envy for the girl in your heart in those far off and heady days of your youth…… SighsAs to boiling tins of delicacies, the only anecdote i can supply is when i decided to make a banoffee pie. Two tins of Nestles milk, boiled for 2.5 hours in a pan was to produce the delicious toffee for this scrumptious desert. But alas due to a memory the size of a gnat, i forgot to top up the water in the pan and the carnage which insued resembled Jackson Pollock’s ‘Autumn Rhythm’ http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ASI/musi212/margaret/pollock.html
Nevertheless, as the Wife of Bath declared “Any Woman worth her salt, can always prove her man’s at fault. My man at the time was to remind me to top up the water and refrained from doing so. I suspect he still denies responsibility for the resulting chaos. The toffee clung to the walls and burned the curtains in its volcanic discharge, and could not be removed by any means. The kichen walls and ceiling had to be repainted to cover the offending toffee, to this day if one looks closely with a critical eye (like a mother or mother in law) remnants of the toffee can still be discerned. I can assure you i have never tried to be so adventurous as to try to create this desert again.
Once again my dear Langstraat i salute you, and the genius that is your ability to entertain
Wow,
Not sure whether I should blush after that epithet.
I’m pleased my stories amuse but wish to point out they are not funny, just a statement of how things are on my planet :)Many thanks for your tale of woe and domestic discord, I hope we can hear more ‘Highland Tales and that this is not “That’s yer Lot” from the Lady of Shallot .
My Mom was 42 when she brought me home for the first time. My sister ‘Jane’ was 9 years old and had expected a puppy for that 1949 Christmas and for the next few years teased and tormented me singing “How much is that doggy in the window” to which I would bark “woof woof”. Some would have thought she tormented mercilessly but nothing could have been further than the truth. I was her tormentor and it continues to this day. She christened me the Pest.
Later as a child when I was ‘naughty’ Mom would try to threaten me with “you wait till your father comes home” that proclamation never bothered me. I didn’t know this ‘Father’ she spoke about I only knew him as Dad and he never raised a hand to me even when height was on his side. Sometimes, Mom would chase me round the garden trying to whip me with one of Dads’ tomato canes and no matter how close I let her get to me she would miss, it was difficult for her to hit a moving target especially when she was laughing and that’s what she did so well. At a wedding reception or family gathering you could hear my Mom’s laughter fill a room. Her singing at church on Sunday morning would raise the congregation to such heights the organ would be reduced to a muffle. Best of all were the times in the depths of winter when in my little bedroom I would hear her laughter downstairs; it filled me with a sense of well being and a warmth you could only get from a cuddle. It didn’t matter if Jack Frost came and paid a visit later that night for when morning came and I awoke someone had tucked me in so tight I was ‘mummified’ with the weight of a flannelette sheet, two thick woolen blankets, a quilted eiderdown, a candlewick bedspread and my Mom’s best coat.Sometimes we would ‘wag’ a day off school to get some school shoes and instead of catching the bus for a treat we would go into Brum by train and have my favourite Egg and Chips at New Street Station before going to the Co-op for the shoes that other stockiest didn’t carry in my size. Afterwards we would we go to the Odeon to see a film, sometimes sharing a Midland Counties ice screen tub. Mom would make a scoop for herself from the tub’s cap. She was always full after two scoops and always left me to finish it off.
It was clear to me that I was the favourite; I never once doubted that and only recently proudly mentioned it to my sister. Jane, tried to put me right, she said she had been the favourite, always had been and always would have been the apple of their eye. My brother Dick 11 years the senior corrected us both in a manner that dad always did. He gave a wry smile and slowly winked. He didn’t speak much, a man of few words but just rocked his slipper on the end of his toe in that annoying manner which was his own. When it came to slipper rocking he reined supreme. He didn’t feel he needed to assert that he was the favourite he smugly swung his slipper nonchalantly with the annoying grin of a first born
Nevertheless, as I left them I knew they were both wrong, I was the favourite.
Why else would they have taken this waif and stray into their home that Christmas time?
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