Good-Friday

Well this week has been a very interesting week; it’s been a roller coaster to be frank.

I’m sitting here eating Shiraz infused chocolate (which is just delicious) and mulling over in my mind the last few days.

Wednesday I visited my girlfriend Zoie's for tea, she made me a fat juicy steak with a red cabbage and walnut salad. This particular friend of mine is what I would call a driven cook. She makes almost all her sauces from scratch (and likes to regularly tell me this too) and she is the only person I know who will come home from work and cook a 3 course meal just for just for herself. She LOVES cooking and I LOVE her cooking for me! We have also had a tongue-in-cheek boasting-banter going on for the last year and a half. If she makes something delicious, Zoie will send me picture of it with a text that says something like this; “Mmmmmm, smoked salmon falling apart on a bed of herbed couscous drizzled in a pepper lemon sauce! And it’s alllll miiiiinnneeee”.  Then a few days later she’ll get a text from me with the words, “dukkah encrusted lamb cutlets, I’d save you some but I already ate them all! So sad”.

After the steak and half a bottle of wine, we ventured back into the kitchen to make some lavender shortbread. Lavender shortbread, I must say (after you get over the thought that you might be munching on one of those scented pillows you put in your underwear draw) is actually quite nice!

The dip in the roller coaster this week was Thursday morning. The processing of a death in ones mind is often hard, but when it happens at the hands of another human being it is so much harder. A lady we know…knew, is hopefully now in the hands of God.  This was so shocking that it has really overshadowed the fact that also this week I have been booked in for a catering job. Actually my mum got the job, but I will be splitting the workload somewhat with her. Despite everything, I am looking forward getting some experience under my belt. It’s a men’s breakfast and at this stage we are looking at 50+ guests. I am hoping also to start looking more into this catering business idea this week. There are a few people I want to talk to, an accountant for one, and a bit more refining in terms of a ‘plan of attack’, what is my aim and all that.

I think that may be there is something behind the desire to start a catering business and I would like to explore it some more before I blow it off as another one of my random ideas.

Lavender Shortbread:

225g plain flour

115g caster sugar

250g softened butter

115g rice flour

1 1/2 Tablespoons of culinary lavender

Sift flours together, add sugar and lavender and then rub through the butter until you get a smooth dough.

Roll out on a floured board and shape as you like.

Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 30-45 minutes depending on your oven