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*

Leftover brisket pasties

Whereas I'm a complete pro at One chicken many ways - leftover roast beef poses more problems for me - once I've made cottage pie of course. The last time I made my super slow cooked brisket I didn't have quite enough leftovers to make a cottage pie, and had lots of the veggies leftover too. That's when my brisket pasties were invented (I say that somewhat tongue in cheek).

I simply shredded the leftover meat with two forks, and put it to one side - the veggies were already cooked, and covered in the thick gravy/ sauce that the casserole makes. I found some puff pastry in the freezer and quickly assembled what were to be the basis of that week's packed lunches and suppers.

One egg wash and 20 minutes later we had some gloriously golden pastry filled to the brim (slightly overfilled in some cases - don't look too closely) with tender veggies and the shredded beef. M had them cold in his packed lunch, I had them warm for mine and both were a definite hit.

Pasties aren't something I normally think of when I'm thinking about leftovers, but they were an incredibly successful way of eeking out a tiny peice of beef into another 6 portions. Without hesitation I'd do these again. There's no recipe as such, as this is more of an assembly process. Hopefully the picture above gives you an idea of how they were made - and my inexpert crimping. I'm sure you can tell pastry is not my most comfortable place.