*Clunk* ... Monday again

Groan, Monday already? What are we facing this week ... Sandbox Wikis or some other techno gobbledy-gook which will no doubt prove just as eye-popping as our Saturday night dinner. Over morning coffee, we salivated over our "You Wish" folder - a large D-ring binder that yours truly has divvied up into sections: appetisers, soups, seafood, poultry, meat, vegetables, pasta, desserts and 'multiples', you know, those mag pages that have about four or five different recipes on them for a whole dinner party. [We initially wanted to call it the "To Die For" folder, but thankfully, sanity reigned!]
We could not choose between two polar opposites - Hot Drunken Beef, to my mind a rather bizarrely concocted curry, or French Daube Lamb Shanks, so we thought, hang it, let's do the curry tonight (Saturday) and the shanks on Sunday. Hey, what else do I have to do on the weekend apart from cook, I thought to myself as I changed Flynn and dressed him, fed him breakfast, stuffed HQ's tea towels into the washing machine, swept floors, and D'Oh! noticed the light wasn't working inside the fridge. "Darling, can you come and check this out?" "Hmmmm," said Mr Engineering 2007, "seems like the globe has blown." Well bugga me, I thought, this man is a potential Rhodes Scholar. It only took two hours of head scratching, saying "this old fridge, glory only knows if you can even buy replacement globes these days" and "how are you going to get that plastic thingy out to access the globe" etc to finally twig the freezer was not, you know, FREEZing. Honestly. Dingbat here had replaced the broom in its posi between the pantry and fridge and knocked the double adaptor from the socket. Pfffff "^ ^".
Back to cooking ... As we do, we made a list in preparation for our shopping trip. This was a very interesting exercise as Hot Drunken Beef had ingredients that even WE don't stock. We have three kinds of vinegar for crying out loud - your normal fish 'n chip vinegar, white wine vinegar [for court bouillon, sauces etc.] and balsamic vinegar [for salad dressings etc.] but no, this needed Red Wine Vinegar. "A teaspoon of green peppercorns". Nope, we've got black, and white, but no green. "Three fresh chillies, one birdseye, one red, one green". Dammit, we've got jalapenos in a jar, but not what was required. Ditto for buying a ginger root and Kaffir lime leaves, both jars nestled in our well-lit fridge. "Whisky to flambe". Nope again. Apart from lean beef, green beans and garlic, it also required fish sauce. Phew, luckily we had a bottle of Nuoc Mam. As we set out to shop, I said, "this is one really weird combo".
The upshot? Wow, Zingo, Shazzamm, Zowie! [thank you Batman]. After grinding up a paste of shallots, garlic, the three types of chillies and the slices of ginger, we fired up the pan, and whammo! Downtown Mornington turned into Morocco or Marseilles, can't quite work out which, but the aroma was full-on! After adding all the other stuff, we disconnected the smoke alarm [experience has taught us this deafening lesson before] and poof! doused it all in whisky and set it alight. Unreal! Served it up with Naan bread [not needed], a crisp bottle of white burgundy, and ooooh'd and aaaaah'd our way through this fascinating dish. We sat back, amazed. Did we really do that? A la Bob the Builder ... "Yes We Did!".
In case you're wondering how I make time in my working day to type all this up, heh heh, I don't. I wrote this on Sunday, saved it to disk, and cut 'n pasted it in here, so dear Management, don't freak out!
Have a great week everyone! Ciao for now.