Meal Planning Monday

After an exciting week last week, involving a family mini-break to Dorset and a trip to River Cottage for me, normal service is most definitely resumed this week. As autumn marches on and September moves into October our meal plan is definitely reflecting the change in the seasons. I want to be at my target weight for Christmas which means a final push on the Slimming World front over the next few months.

Breakfasts: Baked porridge for me and Harry, pear and ginger to start the week, and then apple and cinnamon. Apples from our tree no less!

Lunches: On Saturday I made a big slow cooker full of Chorizo, butternut squash and chorizo chilli - I've frozen most of the leftovers, save for enough for my lunches this week.

Suppers:

Today (Sunday) we're having my Super slow cooked brisket, with roast potatoes, dairy free yorkshire puddings, and veg from the veg patch.

Monday: Leftover roast beef with baked potatoes and more veggies

Tuesday: Shepherd's pie with the leftover beef - as it's not a particularly big bit of beef today it'll be eeked out with lentils and/ or baked beans

Wednesday: Leftover shepherd's pie (I seem to be playing just how far can you stretch a £5 piece of brisket)

Thursday: Baked salmon with lemon, garlic and chilli and some kind of roast amalgamation of all the veggies in the fridge

Friday: We've got some more of the Heck sausages in the freezer so those with baked potatoes and spinach and beans from the veg patch

Saturday: Chicken and butternut squash casserole without the Boursin - another slow cooker job I think, as it'll give us some lovely leftovers based lunches for the week after

Sunday: Roast chicken I think

Baking wise, I'm about to go and knock up some more flapjacks - jam and coconut ones this time.

That's us - as always, don't forget to pop on over to At Home with Mrs M and see what everyone else is up to this week. I'm also joining in with Menu Plan Monday at I'm an Organising Junkie for the first time too.

Meal Planning Monday: the quickfire edition

Quickfire mainly because I'm writing this on the train using the blogger app in a hitherto unheard of fit of last-minute organisation as despite the meal plan being written on Friday, there's just been no time to sit and compose a post.

I'm going to do a couple of posts this week about making your food go further with Sainsburys, so on Saturday we treated ourselves to a brisket and pot roasted that to this recipe This has meant that we had leftovers with baked potatoes last night, and tonight and tomorrow there's cottage pie on the menu - taking a 2lb joint of brisket that cost £8 down to a cost per serving of 66p. Score!

Monday: Cottage pie with beans or kale

Tuesday: Leftover cottage pie with beans or kale

Wednesday: Pizza

Thursday: Pasta bake - loosely based on Pantry pasta with added mushrooms

Friday: Leftovers of pasta bake if possible, or similar from the freezer

Saturday: We're out for my Christmas present of a trip to see Book of Mormon so we'll be treating ourselves to something lovely while we're out and about.

Sunday: Roast chicken I think, mainly to set us up for another week of leftovers.

As I said, a bit of a whistlestop one from me today, but be sure to pop on by At Home with Mrs M and see what the people not doing this on a train are up to.

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.

Meal planning Monday: the wholly disorganised edition

It's that time of the week again already. I'm lucky to be having a long weekend so have tomorrow off. However that doesn't exempt me from meal planning. Although M did cook sausage casserole for tea tonight so aside from a loaf of sourdough I've had pretty much the day off from cooking. 

Friday night was a bit of a baking marathon; snickerdoodle blondies and jam & peanut butter bars for our Division working day yesterday. It's a wonderful day regardless of the weather. One of the things that make me proudest to be a Guiding volunteer is the way that other leaders give up not only their free time for the girls, but unselfishly for projects like maintaining our campsites in the understanding that you can't just take the good things, be they cheap camp fees, beautiful bluebell woods, or pretty much unlimited wood stocks - you must give back and not just monetarily, of yourself and your time. I suppose I'm a huge believer that you get back of life what you put in, and I must say that a day brambling at Cherry is so satisfying in terms of what you can see that you achieve really does make me feel better about the facilities I take for granted as being available to us throughout the year. 

Anyway, back to meal planning - this week I'm training all week again, and then we're off to see M's parents next weekend for the bank holiday. 

Breakfasts: last week they were yoghurt and fruit for me, but as we're out of both it'll be weetabix until we get to the Supermarket!

Lunches: Salads for me again, and I think this week they'll be with smoked mackerel

Dinners: 

Monday: The pot roast beef I meant to do today, roast potatoes, carrots and brocolli

Tuesday: Leftover roast beef with baked potatoes

Wednesday: Cottage pie with peas

Thursday: Leftover cottage pie and vegetables

Hopefully if I can pick up a brisket at the butchers when I'm out on my travels tomorrow, I can slowly pot roast that and it should do enough leftovers for the week. I say that with fingers crossed of course. 

So, that's my week - how's yours shaping up? Be sure to head on over to At Home with Mrs M to see what everyone else has on their meal plan. 

Farmers Choice meat box review

Excitingly I've been sent a meat box from Farmers Choice to review. Over the next few weeks, I'll put a star (*) by any meat I'm cooking with that has come out of that box so that you know it has, and link back to this post for your information. 

As you know we don't eat a great deal of meat in the Pantry - because the price of good quality, free-range meat is prohibitive we choose to eat better quality, less frequently. So this in itself is a bit of a treat - the small Family Essentials pack, contained:

• Silverside Parcel
• Rump Steak
• Diced Beef
• Steak Mince
• Chicken 
• Diced Turkey Breast
• Diced Lamb
• Leg Chump Roast
• Diced Pork
• Pork Loin Parcel
• Sausages

Which for us is a vast amount and will keep the resident carnivore content for many weeks to come. As we don't eat meat each week, and when we do, it's most often a roast that we use on multiple occaisions, in several different ways (see my One Chicken many ways posts) hopefully this will be a way forward for us to purchase meat. What has put me off trying out this or similar meat box schemes was the prospect of storing the meat in our tiny, new build freezer. Everything from the family essentials pack fits easily in one drawer, which is perfect. 

However, I don't want you to think that I would have accepted it were I not happy with the quality of the produce. The Farmers Choice website states:

From Aberdeen Angus Beef from Orkney Island Gold Farm, to completely free range chicken from Childhay Manor farm; all our meat has been born and raised in as natural conditions as possible.

which is of vital importace to me, I wouldn't buy battery chickens so it would be disingenuous of me to review it. 

Cost wise, initially the £72.61 charge put me off taking up this offer - would I really be able to write about something fairly that cost that much? We sat and thought about it, and ignoring the potential for the four roasting joints to each do at least 3 meals for the two of us, it still works out at about £7 per piece which is really good value for money. 

Now I could hardly write a post advocating a meat box without cooking something from it first, could I? Well, quite. So last Sunday, M was at archery and I was home alone, happily houseworking. I decided to frighten myself slightly and cook the Sliverside parcel. It's here I have to hold my hands up and say that since living independently I've never cooked roast beef. I'll happily do steak, or a casserole, but never roast beef. It is one of my favourite autumnal meals, served with crispy roast potatoes, creamy cauliflower cheese, piles of steaming greens and lots of gravy. The only thing missing from our plates last weekend were yorkshire puddings owing to a milk deficit in the fridge. 

Having not cooked beef this way before I did as one does and rootled around my cookbooks and google before happily and successfully using the method below:

Roast Beef

Preheat oven as hot as it will go. 

Liberally cover the beef with mustard (i used the seedy type) and put in a roasting tin on some sliced up red onions

Put this in  the hot oven for 20 minutes initially, then turn the heat down and cook for 30 minutes per kilo plus 20 minute for a medium rare joint. 

I basted the joint twice during the cooking, removed it to rest after 1 hr 15 minutes, while I made gravy and finished everything else up. 

This was beautifully tender and juicy. It also did another three dinners and sandwiches (roast beef and horseradish sandwiches are my downfall!) - working out at £1 per portion.

Despite the lack of yorkshire puddings M was definitely won over, impressed by the flavour, the ease of fitting everything into our freezer, and by the fact that I now have no excuse not to make roast beef! 

Going forwards, if all the meat is as tasty as this was then I'll be a happy bunny, and I'd be lying if I hadn't already been looking at the rose veal and contemplating a little order. 

This post has been sponsored by Farmers Choice, however all opinions are my own.