New recipe

I have to admit I enjoyed my day at the Citizen's Advice today. I still can't bring myself to park in the Mayorhold car park but Frank told me to claim expenses for my mileage into town and back at least. We had a steady stream of people in and although there were a few issues with the internet, the computers weren't the problem today, the fire alarms going off were!

We all had to go outside and we ended up standing outside Buddies until we received the all-clear. One of the advisors, Gill, even ate her lunch while we were waiting as we'd been busy and there hadn't been any real let-up all morning.

I finished at 3pm and went to pick Sophie up from work where she'd had a quiet day. The weather has been gorgeous again with blue skies and warm temperatures. Mike was in town and was supposed to have been getting the bus home but he called us as we were playing cards to say he was in Moulton and could we pick him up? I was very annoyed but felt I had no choice to go and get him before cooking dinner. Grrr!

Tonight we'd decided to cook a new dish called Peri Peri Chicken Pilaf. I'm always nervous cooking a new meal especially if it has any chance of going wrong! I'll never be allowed to forget a particularly disastrous meal involving pork and apples and I was hoping this was going to turn out to be a family favourite!

I adapted the menu slightly and used breasts rather than thighs but cut the meat into fairly large chunks. The chicken had been marinating overnight in the Peri Peri sauce but I still couldn't discern much flavour...I browned the meat and then put it into a warmed casserole dish in the oven before cooking garlic, onions and red peppers. I then added the vegetables to the chicken and tipped in three bags of rice before adding chicken stock. That all went into the oven for half an hour by which time the rice had soaked up a lot of the liquid. About ten minutes before serving I added chopped up tomatoes which gave the dish some more flavour.

With garlic bread it made a nice meal but Sophie wasn't impressed. Keith and I drank a red Chilean Merlot with it and next time I'll cook it more slowly and add wine to the casserole rather than chicken stock. A good Spanish wine would be perfect!

I'd planned on cooking the bread and butter pudding afterwards but while we were cooking the chicken something happened to the oven and it wouldn't get any hotter. We had to abandon the pudding so that really annoyed Sophie as she'd been looking forward to it all day...oh dear!