Wedding (Part 1)

After 15 months of being engaged our special day finally arrived… and I’m happy to say that everything went perfectly! The weather in England had been absolutely terrible in July so when I woke up to rays of sunlight streaming in through my window I was pleasantly surprised (but certainly not counting my chickens)!

In line with wedding tradition in the UK, I stayed well away from my wife to be the night before the wedding and stayed at a lovely cottage called Common Barn Farm. At the cottage I was surrounded by my family, my two best men and my close friends from France who I blogged about visiting in Bergen and Lille - so I was certainly in good company.

After a full English breakfast I was ready to set off and after the usual ‘mother fussing’ (which usually entails my mother taking AGES to get ready) I was all set to get into my car for the day – a Porsche. Needless to say that the drive down to the church was fantastic… all be it quite a fast and blurry ride! For some reason my parents made us park the car on the 4th floor of a multi storey car park, with the exit leading us straight through Macclesfield market. To say we looked out of place all suited and booted would be a bit of an understatement! Anyway, here is the car!

From the second I arrived at the church everything just went so fast. Photo’s were being taken left, right and centre – I smiled so much the my face actually started to hurt after a while! I actually have a little sympathy now for Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt!!! When she walked down the aisle though she completely blew me away – she looked stunning. The whole ceremony went without any hiccups and the sun even came out for the photos outside of the church.

We left the church in a beautiful classic car (equipped with a multi pack of smarties for Susie!) and made our way to our stunning venue Sandhole Farm.

That’s all for now – but I’ll be posting Part 2 very soon (including the wedding cake, our fantastic menu and lots of partying!).

To be continued….

Vegetarian Lasagne

Vegetarian Lasagne - Serves 4

Before I start, I bet some of you are waiting in anticipation for pictures of the wedding and honeymoon! Well…. you’ll have to wait a little longer! We haven’t got the photo’s back from the photographer yet so I dont want to post anything until I have the best photos!  It won’t be long – promise! 

Susie has been banging on about how good her mum’s vegetable lasagne is for ages, and as my parents brought us back loads of puy lentils from their house in France, we thought we’d give it a go. Now I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I am a HUGE meat eater… so to convince me to eat purely vegetables was quite an effort. I mean it doesn’t even have any chicken stock in it for crying out loud! Well marriage is all about making sacrifices, so I stepped out the kitchen and handed over the frying pan.

I have to admit that I am officially an idiot! I cant state enough how much I enjoyed this – the butternut squash was just devine with a lovely crisp topping (a little crispier in the photo as this was leftovers the next night!). When I actually think about it, we do eat far too much meat these days. All you have to do is look back to my parents generation and they had ONE meat night and ONE fish night a week – the rest consisted of bread and drippin’ and beans on toast! ( … well not exactly but you get my point!).

Well I’ve forced asked the new Mrs Schofield very nicely to teach me how to make this and give me the recipe to post on this blog, so here it is. Its so easy to make, cheap as chips and a great healthy weeknight dinner with enough leftover for your lunch the next day!

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp oil (for frying)
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 6 oz of red lentils
• 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 400g jar of spicy tomato sauce (I used Lloyd Grossman)
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 sweet potato, diced (or butternut squash)
• 1/4 tsp basil, oregano & thyme (or use herbs de Provence)
• 250g bag of spinach
• 6 lasagne sheets
• 1 pint of bechemal sauce
• 40g cheddar cheese
• 40g parmesan cheese

Step 1
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onions and garlic until softened a little, then add the carrots, and sweet potato (or butternut squash) and fry for a couple of minutes. Then add both tomato sauces, the lentils and herbs.

Step 2
Simmer for around 15-20 minutes until the lentils are tender, adding the spinach after around 10 minutes. If required add a little water / vegetable stock for the lentils to absorb.

Step 3
Once the spinach has wilted, fill your lasagne dish with alternate layers of mixture and lasagne sheets, until the dish is full. Pour on the cheese sauce and sprinkle some grated cheese in between each layer and on top to give the lasagne a golden finish.

Step 4
Place in the oven at 200 C for around 30 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.

Serving Suggestion
This is easily good enough to eat on its own, but serving with a side salad or some green veg would be especially good!

Enjoy.

Blog update….

As I’m sure some of you have noticed I haven’t posted anything for quite a while – well I’ve been off getting married and am currently on my honeymoon in Thailand & Malaysia!

I’ll be back in the country towards the end of the month, so watch out for updates, including:

• The wedding!
• Kuala Lumpur
• One week of luxury in Khoa Lak, Thailand (including a Thai cooking course)
• Finding the illusive ‘Penang’ curry
• Sun, sand and no accomodation in the Perhentian Islands
• Tea, scones and a bit of British history in the Cameron Highlands

Until next time, take care.

Andrew