Hello to all and thank you for accepting me into your somewhat exciting online cooking community. My name is Ronald Summers and I am here to ask for a little assistance.
After reading yet another article about entertaining in your own home, my other half, Joan, unfortunately felt the overpowering need to invite our “good” friends Nick and Sally over for dinner. To say I am not looking forward to it would be the understatement of the year. For many, many reasons I simply cannot stand Sally and I ran out of things to discuss with her husband, Nick, the first time they came round for dinner, five years ago.
And it gets worse. I have to cook the meal.
It’s not that I can’t cook because as far as I remember, I can. It’s more to do with the fact that I am just so disinterested; I can’t even make beans on toast without getting distracted by the birds in the garden. In any normal situation Joan would be doing the meal but due to the falls she’s been having recently (and on doctor’s orders), she shouldn’t be standing up for much longer than 10 minutes at a time.
Yesterday afternoon Sally called and asked Joan if she would like to go and stay with them for a few days. The official reason is that she will be able to look after Joan during the daytime while I am at work. I know for a fact that Joan mostly sits and watches television during the day anyway so I can’t help but feel Sally’s real motivation for the offer was because she doesn’t believe I look after Joan properly when I get home.
Whatever the reason is, I am now on my own for five days. The next time I see Joan will be when she arrives home with Nick and Sally in time for our thrilling evening of entertaining.
Joan called me this morning and I think she sensed the dread in my voice regarding the cooking. She tried to assure me that everything would be ok and even told me to “get on one of those forum things you’re always on”. She also told me that all three of them have been having a think (how lovely) and have decided that a stir fry would be nice. Now Joan’s spoken I daren’t make anything else.
I’ve had a good look through one of Joan’s recipe books and have decided on something called an “Upland Stir Fry”. After writing down the required ingredients I took a trip to Tesco and luckily I returned with very nearly everything.
The one ingredient I couldn’t find was something called pheasant. I presume this is some kind of vegetable I haven’t heard of or a spice of some sort. I looked through the whole fruit and vegetable aisle and couldn’t find it at all. I feel I should substitute it for something else but unfortunately it appears this is quite an important part of the meal. I would have asked a member of staff to help me but they all seemed far too busy and I had a feeling I might seem a little stupid.
If anyone would be so kind as to answer a few questions, it would be very much appreciated.
- What is pheasant and where can I get hold of some? I searched the internet for the word and it just returned photos of some sort of large bird. Nowhere could I find a mention of the vegetable pheasant.
- The recipe says it serves 4 – 6 people. If it ends up looking like I have too much food when I come to serve it, what do I do with the extra?
- It seems as if whoever wrote the recipe wasn’t entirely sure how much of some of the ingredients should be used. For example, it says: “3/4 cup stock ”. I may be wrong but it seems there would be quite a difference between 3 cups of stock and 4. Which should I use?
- I fear I have bought the wrong sort of carrots. I looked back at the ingredients list once at home and it says “3 medium carrots” but on the bag I bought it mentions nothing about what strength they are. Will I need to buy a different kind?
Yours gratefully,
Ronald Summers |
