Meal Planning Monday: 13th June 2016

No meal plan from us last week - shocking, I know! And it definitely showed in my haphazard approach to the week. We ended up with fish and chips one night, and a pizza night too. Onwards and upwards this week, once Harry wakes up we're off to Aldi to do what will hopefully not be an expensive shop.

I'm doing some baking this week - jam tarts as prep for Brownie holiday which is heading fast towards us. We're Alice in Wonderland themed, and it's just so long since I made jam tarts that I thought I'd better have a trial run. Allergies mean they'll be raspberry jam and dairy free.

My slow cooker is out at the moment for a big batch of my Chorizo and butternut squash chilli - I've not used it for a couple of weeks and have definitely missed the ease of big batch cooks, I think it'll be out three times this week!

Breakfasts: oddly for me I've been really enjoying eggs for breakfast: soft boiled, mashed onto a slice of wholemeal toast with some salt and pepper. I have to eat it stood up in the kitchen so it's not around Harry, but that's what Bing bunny is for, yes?

Lunches: this week is Aldi smoked salmon with salad. And possibly some couscous.

Suppers:

Monday - Chorizo and butternut squash chilli (I'll be having with cauliflower rice)

Tuesday - leftover chilli

Wednesday - Tomato, veg and lentil pasta (I'll be having with courgetti)

Thursday - leftovers

Friday - Slow cooked beef brisket (unseasonal I know, but beef is on special at Aldi this week)

So that's our week, wonderful slow cooker to the rescue!

An InLinkz Link-up

Meal Planning Monday: Preparing for festivties

I've started - amongst thinking about weaning, going dairy free, trying to keep the baby things scooped up together - I made the stuffing for Christmas day last week. The fruit for the cake is soaking in it's usual brandy, and the Christmas pudding is maturing nicely in a cupboard. This week I'm going to make the gravy which will then go in the freezer and next weekend I'll bake the cake so it's got a few weeks of feeding before I marzipan and ice it.

In other news, I'm still dairy free, and missing cheese wildly. However that pales into insignificance when I look at how much less Harry is sick. He's like a different baby. Obviously this gives us lots to think about in case this is a long term allergy, but for now we're embracing the weight gain (26oz in 3 weeks) and just going with it!

Meal wise this week, we're fully into our slow cooked winter warmers. Next weekend I'll make another batch of casserole both for our meals and the freezer, as our homemade ready meals are the saving grace of days when Harry isn't quite himself.

Breakfasts for me are porridge made with rice milk, either with chopped up banana or sultanas and brown sugar.

Lunches are falafel, houmous and pitta bread with carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes. Not particularly wintery I know, but easy to eat while I'm feeding.

Suppers:

Monday - freezer surprise (casserole I think)

Tuesday - Parsnip and bacon pasta but with pecorino instead of parmesan

Wednesday - Lentil ragu

Thursday - Leftover lentils

Friday - Breakfast for tea

Saturday - Chicken casserole with dumplings

Sunday - Super slow cooked brisket - which will take us into next week with leftovers for a cottage pie and hopefully some more pasties


That's our week - festivity preparation is gaining pace and other things are ticking along quite nicely *fingers crossed*

Meal planning Monday

I have to say this week I'm writing this bathed in glorious sunshine, wearing pjs and drinking buckets of tea - this seems to make the whole process a bit more hopeful. We're on the final countdown to the wedding and although the logical part of my brain tells me we're really organised, the hormonal part tells me I should be in full blown panic mode.

A busyish week for us, although no Guides for me this week as I'm travelling back from a meeting on the South coast so don't think I'm going to make it in time. We're starting off with a roast today, although sadly it's not going to provide leftovers as the piece of beef I roasted yesterday is about a third of the size of normal. Just enough in fact to do 4 meals.

Breakfasts: I'm still firmly on the granola and knitted home made yoghurt bandwagon.

Lunches: Still no enthusiasm - so soup or a sarnie it is.

Dinners:

Sunday - leftover brisket with roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, veggies, yorkshire puds and gravy. Yum. 

Monday - I'm meeting one of my very best friends for an overdue catch up and squee over the upcoming nuptials. Food will be involved.

Tuesday - I've got some courgettes knocking around in the freezer so courgetti spaghetti is on the cards

Wednesday - Cottage pie with peas

Thursday - Leftover cottage pie

Friday - Homemade chicken kebabs - I use a variation on this recipe

Next weekend I think I'll do a roast chicken as I'm off in the run up to the wedding so it'll make for a nice straightforward week.

Have a good week - here's hoping this weather holds. What have you got on the meal plan?

Chilli con carne - slow cooker or oven

Another recipe that's ideal for leftover roast beef, just call me the leftovers Queen. Or something. You know I'm not fussy.

Chilli con carne is something I never used to really think about making - if I wanted something of that ilk I'd make my chorizo, pepper & cannelini bean chilli. However, something I've come to realise over the last 4-5 months is that iron is important, and no matter how much kale and other leafy green veg I eat, I do sometimes need the oomph of beef.

This is a fantastic recipe - pretty failsafe, as I've made it in both the slow cooker and the oven. For ease I generally wallop everything in the slow cooker and head off, paintbrush in hand, ready to tackle skirting boards, but if I want to knock it up a bit faster, then the oven is just as good.

In the past I've used ancho chillies - dried, smoky, yet slightly sweet chillis that I leave whole and let the cooking process impart their flavour, but today for ease I used the Gran Luchito chilli paste I've oft raved about of late. 

You could easily switch out the cooked beef for mince, or even for stewing steak. And I'm (unsurprisingly) not averse to bulking it out with carrots and celery grated or finely chopped to make it go further. Also, see lentils or oats.

Slow cooker chilli con carne

2 red onions very finely chopped
2 sticks of celery very finely chopped
2 large(ish) carrots very finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 ancho chilli/ heaped tsp of Gran Luchito chilli paste
1/2 tsp lazy chillis (or similar)
1 tsp ground cumin
Cinammon stick
500g beef (or reduce this down and up the veggies)
250g mushrooms, sliced
1 jar of sundried tomatoes, drained of oil and whizzed up in the processor to make a thick paste
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 tins kidney beans, drained

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C
I pop the garlic, celery, carrots and onions in the food processor and blitz until finely chopped (mainly because I'm lazy - a knife would do just as well)
In an ovenproof pan, sweat off your veg and chilli in a little oil until the onions begin to go translucent, then add your cumin and continue to cook off.
Add the beef - if you're using leftover cooked beef that you've whizzed up, if it's mince, then add it in and brown it first.
Add the mushrooms, and whizzed up sundried tomatoes, stir again
Add in both tins of tomatoes - when emptied, fill one up with water and add that too (if you're doing this in the slow cooker you don't need the extra water)
Pop the cinammon stick in
Add both tins of drained kidney beans

Cook in the oven for an hour and a half.

If you're doing this in the slow cooker - I know I should brown the beef first if I'm using mince, but normally I add in all in fairly bleary eyed, before I go out to work and leave it on low until I get back.

This is a fairly low chilli version - but if you like heat then add more to your taste. 

We have it with steamed brown rice, grated cheese, avocado and greek yoghurt if I have some around. If I'm doing it for guests then I make flatbreads so that people can either dip or scoop up the chilli as they go.

This is amazing as leftovers - M particularly likes it, stuffed into tortillas with a handful of cheese and baked off in a low oven, a sort of naked enchilada if you will. Personally, there's a lot to be said for a big bowl of steamed greens with this lollopped on top on my knees whilst watching Revenge.

Super slow cooked brisket

Each weekend I try to do a 'proper' meal. A sort of meat and 2 veg type affair. This feels so much more important in the autumn and winter, and sometimes it's nice for it not to be roast chicken or pork. I rarely cook roast beef because it's so expensive and because somewhere in my head it doesn't lend itself to leftovers in quite the same way. Of course this is twaddle, but when faced with the butcher or the meat counter in the supermarket I seem to always plump for chicken.

This week I had decided to try something different and slow cook a joint of brisket. Brisket is a cheaper cut of beef, one which requires a lot of slow cooking to break down the connective tissue. We bought ours from the local(ish) butcher and a 3lb joint which cost £12. I nearly fell over but M propped me up, whispering "think of the leftovers" as my shaking hands retrieved the cash from my purse.

Obviously the outlay meant that how I cooked the beef became more important. I had planned to slow cook it, in the crock pot for around 6 hours. I didn't however want to casserole it, as I wanted to retain the integrity of the whole joint of meat.

3lb joint of brisket
2tblsps English mustard
2 carrots roughly chopped
2 parsnips roughly chopped
2 turnips roughly chopped
2 leeks roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
Salt and pepper
500ml either red wine or beef stock

Start by searing the beef in a hot pan - there's a fair amount of fat on the top of the brisket joint and I didn't want to end with a flooby, flaccid peice of meat. This also gives it some colour, without which the end result will be grey. Still wonderfully tasty, but grey
Cover the seared brisket in the mustard
Line the bottom of your crock pot dish with the veggies, and pour the wine/ stock over. I wouldn't go out and buy wine for this - it's an ideal way to use up anything you've got lying around. In actual fact I used white as that's what I had.
Stir in the garlic, and season
Top with the beef
Put the lid on and turn your slow cooker onto High for 6ish hours. You could easily eat it after 4, but when you touch the joint at 6 hours, it just falls to peices.
At the end you can reduce down the cooking liquid to make a gravy - just do this in a pan and allow it to bubble down for a few minutes
Serve with roast potatoes, and the veggies from the pot. And of course yorkshires are mandatory.

Leftovers

There was a huge amount of leftovers. So much so, this joint did. 4 dinners from the slow cooker. 1 dinner of leftovers, plus a baked potato. A vast amount of curry and a cottage pie. Overall we got 14ish meals from the brisket which starts to make it much more affordable. However, I should just say that I completely understand that no matter how reasonable the per portion cost of the joint works out - the initial outlay might be prohibitive. there have certainly be times in the past when I wouldn't be able to afford the £12. That said, if you can afford it - or even afford a smaller piece, I would urge you to try it.

Horse meat burgers. Or why I think the animal isn't the issue

I woke up this morning to a flurry of snow and news headlines centreing around equine DNA being found in Tesco hamburgers. Tesco weren't the only supermarket selling these products but they seem to be the one to have made the headlines the most.

As I listened to the news, followed my twitter feed and checked the headlines, a few thoughts were running through my mind. Over the day these thoughts have cemented themselves into hopefully what will be a coherent, non ranty post.

As an omnivore I actually have little issue with there being horse meat in the burgers - if cows, sheep, pigs and deer are good enough for humans to eat then why the boundary with horses? If we lived in mainland Europe then this in itself wouldn't make headlines.  The issue here is in not being able to make that choice, after all, who expects to find horse in burgers labelled as beef.

What I have an issue with is the people who have become all high and mighty about those who have consumed these burgers. Comments such as "people should buy their own mince and make burgers then they'd know what was in them" were abounding on twitter this morning. And while I don't and can't disagree with that, it's a fact, yes they would. But, and this is a big but, do we think about the reasons why some have little choice but to purchase products such as Everyday value burgers?

Maybe because they cost £1 for 8? In the last few days Jessops, Blockbuster and HMV have gone into administration. Last weekend Honda cut 800 jobs in Swindon. People are losing their jobs and struggling to support their families all over the country, relying on ever reducing benefits to do so.

So why aren't people buying beef mince and making their own burgers? Very often those relying on processed food do so, not just from a cost perspective, but also from a lack of confidence in their own cooking abilities. This in itself is not unlinked (I would guess) to adults of my generation doing very little actual cooking at school. So if you yourself didn't have a parent with the means or the inclination to teach you to cook, that combined with the economic ???? of the country may mean that you find yourself now struggling.

It's also worth a mention here that if you lack confidence, no recipe in any of my many cookbooks for a burger is going to give you that. I could show anyone how to easily make 8 tasty burgers. I would probably tell them that they would be nearly as cheap as those removed from sale today. I would do this with the best of intentions having forgotten to cost in the oil, the egg or breadcrumbs, any seasoning I used. Now I've not mentioned the cost of the gas and electricity as you need to cook the bought ones anyway but I could be pernickity and think about the cost of having the lights on while you make them. And believe me, whilst I don't talk about it (and although not now) I have been one of the people for whom that is a real concern, one of the people who don't just happen to have herbs in the cupboard or spare eggs in the fridge. Food poverty is a real issue in this country, right now and I think that today's headlines only serve to draw more attention to that.

So there we have the main challenge. If you struggle with cooking but have a disposable income that affords you the higher end/ luxury ranges of burgers then you don't run the risk of unknowingly eating horsemeat or worse. If on the other hand you struggle with cooking but don't have that income, you are left with a much reduced choice and may have ended up eating something you neither thought you had purchased, nor wanted to eat.

Penelope's Pantry is not going to set the world to rights - it would take more than this post to do that. But I don't think that horse DNA is cause to condemn those people who have little option but to buy foods of this type for their families.  It is a warning that actually more needs to be done to support and educate people around the food that they buy and put into their bodies. Finally it demonstrates that supermarkets need to show more respect to those shoppers buying their value ranges.

Meal Planning Monday: The 'All by myself' edition

Well, last week's done with, we're back from the Newbury Show, and I'm sat in the hospital waiting for my occipital nerve blocker as the weekend was bookended by migraines. Learning to live with chronic migraine is definitely taking some getting used to but the injections are definitely helping. I'm typing this whist glaring at my specialist's door, willing it to open and for him to call me in. *uses mind power* 

So Meal Planning Monday, M's working in Scotland this week so as the subtitle to this post suggests I'm home alone doing meals for one. I say this like it's a bad thing, but it means I get to eat buckets of fish, and lots of things with coriander in. Mind you, it's my cousin's wedding in three weeks so I'm trying not to eat too much of anything in a bid to fit back into a dress as otherwise I'll be going in jeans and a jumper. It's weird that I've lost a significant amount of weight, but I'm more aware of my size now than I was before. It makes no sense. 

Right, so unsurprisingly breakfasts are yoghurt, grape nuts and fruit (as soon as it cools enough that'll be porridge and fruit - I know I'm epically dull where breakfasts are concerned)

Lunches - the last few weeks I've been slack about lunches so I'm going to try and remember to eat during the day as I'm sure as it's not good for me to be solely fuelled by coffee. I keep saying I'll eat salads but I'm really not enjoying them now the weather's got cooler, so tonight's adventures will hopefully include making a batch of fridge bottom soup. Now I just need a decent thermos for them to go in. Suggestions? 

Dinners - 

Monday: I'm going to revisit the disastrous Thai style turkey burger thingies. This time with the addition of sweet chilli sauce and a tablespoon or so of oil. I'm going to have these with some stir fried spinach and a selection of 'fridge bottom' veg.

Tuesday: Guides tomorrow so although my natural inclination is to skip dinner I will have some grilled fish - a white fish I think (not Pollock - cousin Mark will be pleased to hear) cooked in a foil parcel with soy, chilli and sherry, and some steamed spinach and runner beans

Wednesday: More fish, this time grilled mackerel I think. Loosely based around the recipe I've linked to, so with some horseradish and beetroot in a salady type affair. 

I'll blog both of those dishes - with some fishy type tips. 

Thursday: Brownies, but M is home so our Farmers choice sausages with runner beans and baked potatoes

Friday: I picked up some amazing chorizo at the Newbury show (I could have bought loads but was so so restrained) so Chorizo and butternut squash chilli as that'll give us leftovers for Saturday.

Saturday: Chorizo and butternut squash chilli leftovers

Sunday: Roast beef I think - see my Farmers Choice post that should go up on Wednesday(ish)

So that's us this week, a bit haphazard, and relatively diet orientated. But with any luck - three weeks of this and running and the teal dress will fit beautifully (she says with fingers crossed)

On the plus side, the only shopping I need to do is for some coriander, sweet chilli sauce and fish. A cheap week for me, so not too shabby. 

 Pop on over for further inspiration for your weekly meal plan to At Home with Mrs M, and see you next week.