Happy Birthday To Me

We had a lovely relaxing weekend. I worked all day Saturday and the girls had a sleep over at a friends on Friday night. Saturday night we went out for dinner at a local pub that has recently reopened and is more a restaurant style than pub. We all got dressed up and I actually wore a dress. First time for a little while. I bought the dress to where for Christmas but it was too cold on Christmas day to wear it.

We had the most amazing meal. For the first time in a long long time we had entree, main and dessert.

J had a lovely Thai Raw Beef salad that was just amazing. I had a Prawn Cocktail (been years since I had one of these). For mains J had the Beef and Reef served with a creamy seafood sauce and I had the Beef Pie with a red wine sauce on a bed of mash and peas. Its was delicious. For dessert the girls and I had a chocolate pudding with a vanilla cream. We waddled out of there at the end of the night.

I received some lovely gifts. J made me a card from my scrapbooking stash ( I was so stunned and love it) and he bought me an organice vegetable gardening book, Kady spent a small fortune from her pay on a lovely bottle of Max Mara perfume. It's so yummy. I received $25 from Mum and Dad that helped pay for my Garden of St Erth membership. Friends bought me a lovely top, a bottle of limoncello lemon liqueur, some hand creams from Innoxa ( a lovely set of four).

Today I had both girls home sick from school. Leah has had an ongoing pain in her tummy for months. She has been on a dairy lactose free diet for the last two weeks with no improvement. As a baby and up until a few years ago she was very intolerant of dairy, lactose.

We went back to the doctor today. Tomorrow they have arranged blood tests and an adominal x-ray. The blood tests are to test for a range of things including if she is gluten intolerant.

Tonight I made the most delicious Seafood Pasta dish.

Lemony Seafood in Saffron Garlic Sauce

1kg Mussells

500 grams green prawns

250 grams pineapple squid

1 cup white wine

1 cup water

1 lemon

pinch of saffron

fettucine pasta

40 grams butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic

4 green spring onions, chopped

1 cup cream

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano

Scrub mussels, remove beards. Shell and devein prawns, leaving tails intact. Combine mussels, wine and water into frypan. Cover, bring to boil and simmer for 1 minute. Strain and reserve liquid.

Thinly peel rind from lemon ( I use a grater). Combine rind in pan with reserved liquid and saffron, simmer, uncovered until liquid is reduced by half. Strain reserve liquid.

Add pasta to large pan of boiling water, boil, until tender. drain.

Heat butter and oil in pan, add garlic and shallots, cook stirring for 1 minute. Stir in reserved liquid and combined cream and egg yolks, stir, without boiling until slightly thickened.

Stir in seafood, juice and oregano, simmer, covered for about 2 minutes or until prawns are tender. Serve sauce over pasta. Garnish with spring onions.

Sauce can be made the day ahead, not suitable to freeze.