FOOD glorious FOOD

Well we just had our final wedding planning meeting with a lovely lady from Hedingham who seems to have everything that I've been stress heading about under control. Which is excellent cos I don't think I've got a brain big enough to hold all the disparate threads of everything we've booked, never mind process what needs to be done! Everything seems wonderfully in hand, which is good. As my sister says, it's not that hard organising a wedding, you just book stuff and they turn up.... unless you're a complete control freak like me!

An added bonus to our visit was that we got to try our wedding menu, which is being cooked by a lovely lady called Liz (from her company karat catering). When we arrived, we were shown into the Georgian manor house - in the picture here. This is where we'll be having our post ceremony drinks on the big day. It's a really lovely house, with beautiful gardens overlooking the lake at the back. I'm just hoping for a sunny day!

Anyway, we went in and were given our 'thrones' in the dining room round a mahusive table. Much like the ones you see in Jane Austen dramas (though I don't any more as Mike won't watch any more Austen with me. Our house is an Austen free zone) with proper posh antique furniture and scary looking portraits of long dead ancestors with big noses, hands in waistcoats, big beards and hunting dogs. Well, that was just the ladies :D (got to add one bad joke to keep up with Mike). I don't think I'll ever have another experience like it - our own personal chef cooking us our meal at a table you could fling salt cellars down.

I am tempted to pretend at this juncture that I've made it an all vegetarian menu. A selection of just salad leaves and fish would particularly annoy Mike's best man, Tom, and we did pretend for a while that he would have no big juicy plate of meat to eat but I couldn't keep it up. So he and my step dad Magnus will be happy to hear that there is a hearty meat option....

So out came our first courses - I had a salad of asparagus, jersey royals, radishes and mixed bay leaves, while Mike had the hot smoked salmon pate with lemon and parsley potato salad. They were both absolutely delicious and very impressive. Though a tad intimidating to eat surrounded with all those scary portraits looking down at us...

After devouring both, we were brought through our three (yes three!) mains to try between us. Mike said it may well have been the happiest day of his life.... he had a braised lamb shank with chick peas, tomatoes, smoked paprika, coriander and minted yogurt, which was, quite frankly, the biggest leg of lamb I have ever seen. My normal practice when someone is eating lamb is to spend the meal making bleating noises and talking about cute fluffy little baby lambs skipping joyfully across meadows, but I managed to restrain myself somehow. Anyway, Mike loved it. I think he was determined to eat it on our wedding day, until he tasted the Roasted Salmon fillet, which although standard wedding food fare, was the most delicious salmon fillet I've ever tried. Poor fishies. I think a lot of them will die so that our wedding guests may taste their delicious flesh. Have I converted anyone yet? Anyway, I was delightfully happy with my vegetarian selection, which was really really tasty. I had avoided anything with mushrooms, cheese or anything with 'spinach and ricotta' in the title, on the grounds that that's always what vegetarians get, and I was so glad that the vegetarian selection that Liz cooked was really good. I chose buckwheat pancakes stuffed with roasted sweet potato, red pepper, pesto and red onion with spicy tomato sauce. They were gorgeous.

We did actually eat all that. Foolishly, I was not thinking ahead to how I would fit in that wedding dress in my cupboard, or the beach pictures from my honeymoon. Nor was I thinking about the desserts.... vanilla cheesecake with strawberries and a chocolate torte with coffee cream. Despite the fact that I am a complete chocoholic, I didn't actually think the chocolate torte went with the menu - far too rich! So I've changed it to a lemon and lime tart, which I thought would go much better. I couldn't finish the desserts - how depressing!
All that followed by coffee too.

I hope I've whetted your appetite. The food was fantastic. Far too delicious for dieting through!! Aw well, I'm back on the beansprouts and lettuce leaves now :(

I hope everyone at the wedding enjoys the food as much as we did :)

lyn x