A fun week and a finish

This week has been a fun week. To start with the only day I needed to go into work was today. I still had quite a bit of work I needed to complete but it is more fun to work from home. Lucy has also had holiday this week so we got to hang out together. I've already told you about our trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Wedding dress exhibition but we also had fun playing in my new kitchen. We tried out several new recipes.  The boozy baked chicken with peppers proved very popular. It looked very colourful and appetising as we prepared it

Yes there are whole garlic cloves in it. Once it was cooked the baby onions had a lovely caramelised finish and the whole meals was yummy.

The recipe was in the Sainsbury's magazine for February and was a recipe that was put to the test. The original recipe was by Gennaro Contaldo and Aggie MacKenzie tested it for the magazine. Often on these tests she tweaks the recipe but this time she didn't need to.

Serves 4 Prep 35mins Total time 2 hours.

150mls dry white wine
1 tablespoon English mustard. (I used dry mustard powder)
4 chicken thighs and 4 chicken drumsticks. (I used chicken breasts)
100g prosciutto, roughly chopped
10 baby onions or shallots peeled
225 baby vine tomatoes halved
1 yellow pepper and 1 red pepper deseeded and thinly sliced (I used a green pepper instead of yellow)
2 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole. (I added a couple more)
2 tablespoons of port
2 tablespoons brandy
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Combine the wine and mustard. Set aside

2. Put the chicken pieces in an ovenproof dish with the prosciutto, onions, tomatoes, peppers and garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss together. Pour over the white wine mixture, port, brandy and olive oil and toss. Cover with foil and set aside to infuse for 20 minutes.

3.Preheat the oven to 170C, fan 150C , gas 3

4. Place the chicken in the oven and bake for 1 hour, basting from time to time. Remove the foil and cook for another 30 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven, garnish with the parsley and serve.

I must remember to take some photos of the kitchen over the weekend so you can see how it's progressing. I need to decide on the tiles and flooring so I can get it finished in the near future.

On Wednesday John and I went to Kathryn's MA graduation. It was a lovely  with lots of sunshine  but unfortunately Katy wasn't feeling too well. However she managed to enjoy her day. I couldn't find my camera charger so I had to take photos on my phone so unfortunately the shot of her walking across the stage is rather fuzzy.

As she wasn't well we didn't go out for a celebration meal but we will do that in the near future.

Finally this week I managed to complete the baby quilt for my colleague. I missed her baby shower but will give her the quilt on Thursday as she doesn't go on maternity leave until next week. I decided to bind the quilt with polka dots. The fabric is part of the same collection by Michael Miller. I'm really pleased with how this quilt has turned out.

The quilting is a meander over the elephant and white fabric. The red and blue stripes are left unquilted. The binding was machine stitched to the front and hand stitched to the back.

I have also been working on my Votes for women quilt. I'm not sure I'll have it finished for the end of the month but it is well underway.

Tomorrow John, Tony and I are walking. We are heading out to Maidenhead by train and we'll walk back to Datchet along the Thames path. The weather forecast has changed from sunny all day to cloudy with a chance of rain so I'm going to leave Scamp at home.  

I'm linking this post with Amandajean's Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and Richard and Tanya's Link a finish Friday at Richard and Tanya's Quilts

I hope you week has been fun and you've had a chance for some sewing.

Lyndsey