Cheoff

A site about food, drink and other random stuff!

Filtering by Tag: marriage

Ruby Wedding #3 - Family, Friends and Food

It's what we have done for years. Mrs Cheoff was always a terrific cook with the ability to plan, prepare and present great food to a big gathering of people. She has created lovely menus for oodles of special occasions... birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations of all sorts of success and achievement. Sometimes the only excuse was to entertain and please. A fine excuse if you ask me.

Eventually, I wasn't afraid to interfere and contribute.

With our combined love of cooking and the eagerness to share our results it seemed perfectly natural to offer a spot of afternoon delight to treasured family and friends as part of our Ruby Wedding celebrations. We managed to arrange this on the day of our anniversary. A buffet lunch.

After reviewing pictures of the main and dessert tables it behoves me to resort to uncustomary honesty. Both those tables are heaving under the strain of far more of my wife’s work than mine.

Looking at much of cheoff.com will give you a false impression. Yes, I do often spend time with more demanding recipes but the savoury and sweet spreads shown here represent the bedrock of what has come out of our kitchen for decades.

From this point on, you are gathered here today to view most of the food items on offer. Links are there for recipes where available. Salads were also homemade and the only one shop-bought ready-made was pork pies from our local Brown’s Family Butchers.

Exceptional gammon with cider and cinnamon 

Shooter’s Roll Our trusty - regularly tried and trusted - M&S cookbook recipe. Like a vulgar sausage roll. One which demands that you embrace any vulgarity after the very first bite!

We are asked for the recipe constantly. Here you go…

Shooter's Roll from our M&S cook book

Smoked Salmon and Dill Quiche/Tart/Thing Not - by a long shot - the last Delia recipe you will find here!

Coronation Chicken No idea (recollection of) which recipe we used. Perhaps something close to the ‘original’. You surely have your own favourite. It’s been tweaked for decades!

Black Forest Pavlova Three words which say, “EAT ME!”

Terrine of Summer Fruits From ‘Delia Smith’s Summer Collection’ Made by us since 1993 when the book of the TV series first appeared - a book which was reprinted twelve times in that year!

Deep Lemon Tart With cream to counteract that awfully sharp lemon attack! #winkemoji

Wimbledon Cheesecake This was a baked variety which followed swiftly on from the second time Andy Murray had lifted ‘The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Championship of the World’ trophy ten days before. Sorbet, ice cream and meringues* were all there if needed to help this go down the better. Ooh, oooh, I made two out of three of those!
*’Merigues’ according to our typo label!

Just ‘cake’ to finish.
My rich fruit cake richly decorated by Mrs Cheoff. Mrs Cheoff’s sponge cake with a restrained seasonal ‘coronet’.

Rather like the aftermath of Christmas cooking, our anniversary efforts for family and friends left us with extras which lasted well beyond the day itself.

Other options - outside caterers, hospitality venues and the like - were available. We chose the cheaper and totally daft alternative. Without any regrets. All the work put in had left us a little weary but, rather like the effort put into our forty (and a bit) year relationship, a tiredness overlaid with huge satisfaction and happiness. With hardly any regrets!
-xx-

Savoury and Dessert labels by Mrs Cheoff

I'll drift off now into a reverie filled with nostalgia. I prefaced a short speech to our assembled guests by accessing and playing a recording of this piece of music. It's the tune to which Jan entered the church on our wedding day...

website http://www.gertvanhoef.nl/. Water Music of Wassermusik is een van de bekendste composities van Georg Friedrich Händel. Hij schreef deze in opdracht van een diplomaat, baron Von Kielmansegg, om op 17 juli 1717 uitgevoerd te worden ter gelegenheid van een boottocht op de Theems. 'Alla Hornpipe' een prachtig deel uit deze Watermusic, wordt hier uitgevoerd door Gert van Hoef tijdens zijn concert in Harlingen.

“Phwoooar!” he ejaculated.
(I do hope readers will recognise my old-fashioned turn of phrase. I remain a devotee of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Doctor Watson. And a permanently big fan of Mrs. G!)

Sometimes Love Just Isn’t EnoUgh

At the end of next month Jan and I will celebrate our Ruby Wedding anniversary. Time to draft a bit of speechifying methinks.

We were much younger then and, if we are honest, not utterly sure of the outcome, but we signed a contract to bind us.

It’s actually more than forty years now since we started our relationship. Right from those early days we explored many ways to make things work. Often we selfishly started with what was best for us as an individual. But we were big enough to realise that we had chosen our partner because we rather liked them and that helped us to take their hopes, wants and needs and mix them in with ours.

Once we had made that small but significant step, we started to really grow together. Protecting your own interests while desperate not to hurt someone you think of as so very special is a struggle. Occasionally we more or less gave in to the other’s demands but so much more often we found a way to work things through with positives for both of us.

Definitely a struggle… but a struggle that revealed countless things about each other which we wanted to hold fast to and build on. A struggle which strengthened us rather than pushed us apart. We became better together than we ever were on our own.

There is love, of course - love in all its different expressions. But there is now so much more. The intricate and complicated nature of our partnership makes it at turns vibrant and frustrating… but always gloriously enriching.

There… I could just as easily be describing our marriage instead of the British union with Europe, couldn’t I?

Our marriage will endure and grow. After all those same wonderful connections made over decades it is so sad that a nation has decided to give up its previously rewarding struggle and discard its partner.

Jan and I intend to live and work in peace with the decision made on the 23 June.

Our marriage remains our wonderful and enduring achievement. We will never let it go. We will never let each other go.

Some things were not meant to be.

Jan and I were always meant to be.

While fearing the worst, I still hope I can utter different words to our invited guests in six weeks time. If not, we will still have something magnificent to celebrate and Jan and I will be together to share whatever comes.

Sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes… let’s be honest, almost always, we need to draw on much more complicated connections. Connections which have been forged over a time long enough to give truly serious thought to breaking those precious links.

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than that which divides us.

(Jo Cox, British politician)

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