Oof. The weekend came just in time

 It has been a long week. Partly because it just is at this time of year for me - my job peaks and troughs quite predictably, even in the apocalypse, and the week of Awards Panel Meeting is a big week. The tension! The preparation! The loooooong Teams sessions! The endless paperwork to follow! 

It's all good. But I do wish I'd set the meeting up for a different date - it was 4 March last year too, at the Quakers in Birmingham, in a meeting that would today have a covid-safe capacity of 3 at most (...maybe 2? It was pretty snug with 12 of us last year...). We shared sandwiches at a buffet and there was a handover of retiring members and newbies who are now not newbies but we've never all been in the same room together since. It is a feeling of deepest nostalgia. 

Anyway. I have therefore continued not to be on top form this week, brain-wise, and I have only the most vestigial recipe for you - another Home Cookery Year, prawns with tomatoes and oranges. 

Begin with sweating off an onion, adding a load of garlic when it's soft, then adding a hefty pinch of smoked paprika, a couple of bay leaves, a looooong curl of orange peel-

So far, so good

 -and then I forgot to take any more photos. You just stir it all together, season, add 250g passata, and cook for 10 minutes (or more, I reckon more) till it's thick and glossy. Then add raw prawns, cook them 2-3 minutes until pink, and you're done. So long as you're ok to get prawns, it's an excellently quick midweek evening meal.

Serve with orange wedges, parsley scattered. I have to say I thought this was delicious on about the third taste, but my tastebuds initially recoiled at orange-tomato-garlic-paprika as a combo. The prawns are fine with all of it, but the sauce has oomph. 

It would be good with rice, maybe even as a pasta sauce, but I am knackered this week so it's been on toast. And very fine too. 

I did remember the last few bites for evidence. Gnawed oranges and all: