As regular readers will know, I like food, like to eat out on occasion, and am invariably disappointed. To this end, the Deckhand and I decided to make our own Chinese meal on Saturday. He prepared a simple marinade for ribs, I coated them, then left them to marinade for hours. After lunch, I made a marinade for the tangerine beef, and the sauce, and asked him to make the marinade for sesame chicken. We had the laptop open in the galley, and 2 word documents where I’d copied the recipes from the net open, side by side. His marinade looked too runny, and after checking, I noted he’d made the sauce not the marinade. I put the sauce aside and pointed out the marinade instructions.

To start with, he liberally sprinkled the cooker top with sesame seeds that I’m sure I’ll be picking up for days to come. They should have gone into the dry fry pan, how he missed is beyond me lol. Cleaning up completed, he dry-toasted them then made the marinade. The coated chicken was then cooked in the oven, then grilled, by which time it still looked a tad raw. To h*ll with the healthy way, it was summarily tossed into a lightly oiled fry pan, cooked properly, then tossed in the sauce. It was okay. The beef was very involved and frankly not really worth the effort, and we were left with an overwhelming taste of tangerine, not beef. The ribs, cooked open for an hour with a pan of water beneath them, then covered for 2 hours, were amazing. The easiest dish, turned out to be the best dish. Steamed rice was easy too lol.

So, a lot of effort, a huge amount of washing up, and an average meal to boot. We each make a good sweet and sour, lovely stir fry rice, and good vegetable stir fry, but beyond that? I’m beginning to suspect that we don’t actually like most Chinese dishes…

To compensate for all the meat involved, we’ll now have 2 days of vegetarian food. Sunday, he’ll have a pasta dish, whilst I’ll have cauliflower cheese with some sweet potato. The deckhand doesn’t like cauliflower, mad fool. Monday we’ll have black beans and rice with roasted squash on the side. Lovely!

The weather here has warmed up which is good, though it has turned dull and damp too – not so good. We’ve had fireworks going off for over a week now, with Saturday night being the worst so far. The Ship’s Dog was glued to me all evening, slept in my room for a short while, went downstairs, came back up, went downstairs, paced awhile… You get the picture. I’ll be glad when it’s all over and done with, until New Year of course.

Nothing much going on here, the usual frustrations with parking, some nice walks with the Ship’s Dog, fruitless job hunting… Some good nights where I’ve slept for almost 8 hours, others not so good with neighbours playing the TV in their bedroom and keeping me awake until 11.40pm when I abandoned my bed for the sofa downstairs. Just life lol.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and have a good week.