Meal Planning Monday - late again!

I swear - first week of January and everyone else is all motivated and organised and I'm there flapping behind, trailing in a sleep deprived, teething baby haze of Calpol, concealer and coffee. But I'm here now. And almost organised. Ish.

Meal planning for the week actually happened at the end of last week as I did our online shop for Friday. It's been quite interesting planning as I've started doing Slimming World (I know it's a bit of a new mum, new year cliche but my default weightloss position of run isn't possible because of my hips) and combining that with being dairy free for Harry is a bit of a challenge. I suspect this first week won't be entirely successful as I'm struggling with balancing being dairy free, not eating artificial sweeteners, breastfeeding, Health Extra A's and also a lot of the things that seasoned slimmers rely on like low fat yoghurts are off the table for me. Overall I've been quite hungry and conscious that I'm probably not quite meeting the mark, but am hoping my food diary and notebook will help with that come Monday.

That said Harry's reflux is so much better and his weight gain (oh the irony) is off the charts with me off dairy (and soya) that even if it means that Slimming World isn't for me it's still worth it.

The weather here is freezing, so I've been having soup each day for lunch - a homemade carrot honey and chilli concoction that I really like. It's not quite syn free as it did have a couple of teaspoons of honey and a tablespoon of olive oil - but that was for the whole batch, which has done 10 portions thus far. Next week I'm doing a yellow split pea and veg soup - a variation on this Nigella one, but without the butter or frankfurters.

Breakfasts: I've been having porridge made with oat milk (but am going to try Almond milk next week) and mixed spices - aiming for a gingerbready flavour to compensate for a lack of sugar  with a chopped apple and banana in the bowl.

Lunches: It's strange that lunch is more important now as I've spent 7 months skipping it and compensating with large quantities of biscuits...  so I'm having either soup and a tuna sandwich, or a baked potato with prawns and a plateful of veggie sticks, or an omlette with mushrooms and ham.

Suppers: 

Sunday: Super slow cooked Brisket with extra veggies

Monday: Leftover roast beef with baked potatoes and veggies

Tuesday: Leftover beef turned into cottage pie with carrot, parsnip and potato mash on top and extra veggies. If I'm short on beef I'll be bulking it out with baked beans as randomly I've run out of lentils. 

Wednesday: Leftover cottage pie with frozen peas

Thursday: I've gone back to Brownies this term so will make a veggie pasta bake and leave it in the oven on low for M

Friday: Breakfast for tea

Saturday: I made a chilli con carne this week that I've frozen some portions of, so I think that would be a lovely warming supper

Sunday: Roast chicken (mainly to ensure an easy week next week!)

That's our week. Any of you out there doing slimming world with any suggestions for Slimming world friendly weeknight dinners that M would like and don't rely on heaps of dairy, please do leave your links below... I'd be super grateful for some inspiration.

Now, if someone could just poke me to remind me to link up with At home with Mrs M I'd be very grateful.

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.

Meal Planning Monday: the dairy free edition

So far since June, our meal plans have focussed on foods that increase your breastmilk, food that should be gentle to digest, weaning, and now... now we're dairy free. It seems that the paediatrician suspects that Harry doesn't have reflux per se, but is in fact allergic to Cow's milk - probably the protein. As I'm keen to breastfeed him for as long as possible this has meant cutting dairy out of my diet. Which despite having done it in the dim and distant past is harder than I remember.

When I'm not bemoaning the loss of tea, going dairy free actually isn't too hard, I just need to be organised, which I wasn't last week so it was all a bit haphazard. M is out at a curry night tonight and the baby is asleep (for now *touch wood) so I'm doing our meal plan and online shop before turning in for an early night myself. My temptations are chocolate, tea or coffee with milk and cheese. I can do without all of them, if I have alternatives. Annoyingly from what I've been reading today, it looks as though soya could be linked as an allergen but I'm going to give dairy until the end of the month, and then if things haven't improved will take out soya too.

Breakfasts - I can have porridge made with water, or sourdough toast with peanut butter that's just peanuts and a banana.

Lunches - I've made some of Jamie Oliver's barbecue beans which I've been having either on toast or just as they come in a bowl. They would be amazing with cheese. Just saying.

Suppers -

Monday - Leftover chorizo and butternut squash chilli with rice/ or in burritos

Tuesday - Pasta and meatballs

Wednesday - Freezer surprise

Thursday - Pulled pork with baked sweet potatoes

Friday - Leftover pulled pork

Saturday - Baked potatoes with the aforementioned beans

Sunday - Slow roast brisket (and not just because of the leftovers. Ahem)

If anyone reading has any experinece of breastfeeding a baby with cows milk allergy, please do let me know what's been useful to you...

Meal Planning Monday: the heating's on

We caved last week - my summertime obsession about the baby overheating has switched (much like the weather) into an obsession about him being too cold. Which is hard when he wriggles his socks and hat off, and screams the house down if you try and shoehorn him into a cardi or jumper. Blankets and heating it is then.

Unsurprisingly there's another casserole in the oven as I type, and dumplings ready to be popped in before too much longer. This weather just seems to call for tender, slow cooked meat in rich winey gravies with lots of root veggies. Full marks to Aldi for their Super 6 this week being fantastic for said casserole.

The weaning is... shall we say interesting? Some days the baby rice stays down and seems to have the same effect on Harry's milk, on other days it doesn't seem to make a blind bit of difference. I'm keeping on, and just hoping for the best.

Breakfasts - we're back on porridge, with chopped up banana

Lunches - I'm randomly trying to use up some halloumi that's languishing in the fridge so - griddled halloumi and houmous in pitta bread with carrot and cucumber sticks

Dinners -

Monday: Leftover beef casserole with mashed potatoes and broccoli

Tuesday: Courgetti spaghetti

Wednesday: Chilli con carne (freezer) with rice

Thursday: Chicken casserole with baked potatoes

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Pesto & pecorino salmon with sweet potato wedges and veggies

Sunday: Slow cooked beef brisket

Lots of comfy, cosy food for chillier evenings here. What goes on your menu when the weather changes?

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 sun'll come out...

*fingers crossed*

Normal service has been resumed in the Pantry, and I write this with a fruit cake baking and a shoulder of pork slow roasting in the oven.

I got home late on Thursday and after a pizza and a much needed hug, slept all the way through until the morning. I swear there were angels singing. This weekend has deliberately been slow, with a spot of running, some shopping and a trip to Shaw corner. M and I realised that the only sensible Christmas present for us is National trust membership and are ignoring the fact that this makes us old.

Next week M is working fairly long hours and I'm trying to fit in 5 runs alongside Brownies and Guides. However, that kind of busy week is eminently manageable - which is odd when last week all I had to do was work and run and that wasn't manageable.

Breakfasts - Total greek yoghurt was on special this week, so I have a daily tub of that, plus strawberries/ blueberries or stewed rhubarb and grape nuts.

Lunches - salad and smoked mackerel for me.

Dinners -

Monday: Leftover slow roast pork with salad and baked sweet potatoes

Tuesday: Leftover slow roast pork in tortilla wraps, with guacamole, yoghurt and salad (rice for M)

Wednesday: Courgetti spaghetti

Thursday: M's night - sweet chilli chicken I think

Friday: Sausages, baked potatoes and salad

I'm baking a Nigella fruit cake with chopped up marzipan - so that'll be our cake quotient this week.

Happy Monday - and don't forget to get your inspiration from At Home with Mrs M and all the other meal planners.

Meal planning monday: the cold, stressed edition

It's cold, wet and quickly darkening outside. I'm cold, stressed and grumpy. What better situation to put together this week's meal plan? Really, no need to answer, that was rhetorical.

I don't know if it's the weather, or trying to combine keeping our home lovely, clean, calm and restful with busy lives. Who knows? What I do know is that if work continues to be busy and life continues to be chaotic I'm going to be thinking about a cleaner. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really am beginning to consider it. 

Anyway, back to usual. It's another busy week, work, training, running, Guides, Brownies and then the annual Remembrance sleepover next weekend. M and I should get to catch up on Wednesday, but otherwise it's ships that pass in the night!

Breakfasts: so, as winter has finally taken hold, it's definitely porridge. I'm going to stew some blueberries to go on top. I try to have one of the Sainsbury's bags of frozen fruit in the freezer as they make for such convenient ways to add in extra fruit

Lunches: Definitely soup. Soup all the way. Salads and sarnies are a no go from this point onwards until - let's say June?

Dinners, always the interesting bit of these posts

Monday: I was hoping to have leftover Minced beef hash, but I only had half a pack of minced beef so at the moment I don't think it'll stretch. Mind you M's at Welsh so if I get a potato to bake it may well. Watch this space. 

Tuesday: I'm at Guides, so I'm going to get out some chorizo, butternut squash and cannelini bean chilli out of the freezer for M to have with rice. 

Wednesday: Seeing as it's our only night in together this week I should make something lovely - I was thinking of putting a casserole in the slow cooker to have when we get in.

Thursday: hopefully there'll be leftover casserole! 

Friday: M's going up to his parents, and I'm going to be getting ready for the Guide sleepover. I've got some undyed smoked haddock in the freezer, and I think I'll poach that in milk with bay and peppercorns, and have it with peas and some bread and butter. 

So that's it... a quick week in the pantry - the next few weeks are going to be non stop. I'm hoping M and I will do better than one night together in seven as we go on! Be sure to pop over to At Home with Mrs M to see what all the other meal planners are up to. 

Slow roast loin of pork

Please do accept my apologies for the Instagrammed shot of this meal, I was slightly flustered and very hungry when I dished up, and it was only when M said "aren't you going to take a photo" that I realised my camera was on charge, and I didn't want to go and get his DSLR and fuss, so a phone shot it was to be. 

Anyway, when I'm cooking pork, I normally do a slow roast shoulder which is a firm favourite of ours. So much so, I've not really considered using other cuts. This meant that the pork loin parcel that Farmers Choice sent me was a bit of a thinker. In the end, I decided that I would use a dry rub to add some extra flavour, and cook the pork slowly, just not as slowly as I would a shoulder. Because the fat on the loin parcel is all on the top, not spread throughout like in the shoulder cut it needed to be almost seared, keeping as much moisture in the joint as possible. 

The joint was about 3lb in weight and I worked on the basis of about 45 minutes per pound after the initial 10 minutes. 

Dry rub: Salt, sage, thyme, a crumbled bay leaf, olive oil and pepper. Rub all over the joint

Heat oven up to as hot as it will go - about 250 degrees for my oven. Put sliced onions, or leeks on the bottom of your roasting tin, and lay the pork on top. When the oven is hot, put the pork in the oven for 10 minutes

Turn the oven down to 120 degrees, then cook the pork for 45 minutes per pound

Take it out of the oven, lift out of the roasting pan, cover with a clean tea towel and leave to stand for 10 minutes or so

Put the roasting pan back on the heat, add a glass of wine, and a ladleful of vegetable water and stir to make the gravy. Bring this to the boil while using a wooden spoon to incorporate all the yummy sticky and burnt bits from the bottom of the pan. Here is your gravy.

I then sliced off the thin layer of fat from the top that isn't in itself thick enough to make crackling. Turn this upside down, sprinkle liberally with salt and put back in the oven as hot as it will go until you're ready to serve, voila - crackling. 

We had our pork with roast potatoes, smashed veg (butternut squash, parsnip, swede and carrots) brocolli, stuffing and gravy. M would like to go on the record as saying it was yummy. 

Baked tomato pasta

I've talked before about how tomato pasta was my first bought recipe that I tried out. Good Housekeeping gave me my point in that direction. This version is a grown up version of that same recipe. 


Much like where you started using a handbag at 16, it's just a rucksack really but it's your handbag - housing (in my case) a Body Shop cherry lipbalm, emergency bar of chocolate, purse and front door keys, and a copy of the Musicals magazine that had the tape of that month's musical on the front. I was a classy teen. Please note the absence of a mobile phone. Yes, I'm that old. These days, in amongst the detritus of scrumpled receipts, business cards and the odd Guide badge are still keys and a purse, a tube of Lanolips 101 balm, my iPhone, Kindle, packet of tissues, lipstick, rescue remedy, migraine stick, hand cream and medications. The musicals are now uploaded to the iPhone. Some things never change. 


Much the same as the contents of my handbag have grown up with me, so have some of my recipes. This is one such example.


Baked Tomato Pasta 


Olive Oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, whole, unpeeled
2 tins of tomatoes (a good Italian brand)
500ml good red wine - something you would enjoy drinking. You're going to intensify the flavour so it needs to start off well
Oregano - fresh if it's the summer, dried in the winter
Mozzarella - this can be basics range as you're going to bake it


Pasta - I bake this normally with penne, but used conchigle this week as that's what I had


You'll also need a casserole dish with a lid


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
Start by putting your casserole dish on the hob on a medium heat 
Pour a good few tablespoons of Olive oil into your casserole and add your garlic
Open the tins of tomatoes and using a sieve drain the water from them as much as possible
Add the tomatoes to the casserole, and then add in the wine
If you're using dried oregano add it now
Put the lid on the casserole as the ingredients just start to bubble and put it in the oven. Leave it for an hour


After an hour, take the casserole out, and fish out each clove of garlic. Squish out the now soft garlic which will have cooked to an amazingly sweet sludge(I cant think of another word) and stir those into the sauce
Put the lid back on and put the casserole back in for about half an hour
Chop the mozzarella roughly into a large dice
Cook your pasta for about half the stated time, then drain it and take your sauce out, add the pasta, stirring the sauce in so it's well coated. Add the mozarella, keeping about half to one side. If you're using fresh oregano add it now.
Don't put the lid back on, but put the casserole back in the oven for another half an hour
Sprinkle with the rest of the mozzarella and serve, if you're feeling it, garlic bread is in equal measures trashy and fabulous here. 
You should probably serve this with the rest of the wine. I'm not a big red wine drinker so I don't, I freeze the leftover red wine to add to my next casserole. Just call me Miss thrifty.


This is an amazing, beautifully slow cooked dish. Perfect for a chilly Sunday in February, warming and hearty. Yet for some reason with the fragrant fresh oregano, and the mozzarella all stirred in at the last minute, served in the garden on a summer's evening with a crisp glass of white wine it doesn't feel at all unseasonal. Perhaps this is a trans-seasonal recipe? Is there such a thing?

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes - seriously slow cooked Pork shoulder

OK, it didn't take that long, that's 8 thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours (or a year for those familiar with Rent).

This is a recipe I dreamt up last weekend courtesy of a vague memory of a television programme from some years ago (something about eating British Pork). Do you ever have that? Or is it just me? You know where you wake up thinking about something and know that you 'need' to cook it just so that your internal dialogue stops prodding you and suggesting - try slow cooked shoulder of pork, try slow cooked shoulder of pork.

Truth be told I woke up last weekend in serious need of comfort food, the cold I had had over Christmas has alarmingly mutated into one of those viruses I get from time to time that fells me completely and on Saturday my need for comfort food was immediate and clear. M was working and so I spent my day indoors, pottering around the kitchen (in a vague attempt to ignore the need to hoover. I capitulated on Sunday) I believe that the slow cooked, hot food really helped although I was lost to the virus, hence the quietness on the posting front this week.

So Slow cooked shoulder of pork. I asked my butcher to score the fat as I definitely wanted crackling (diet? What diet? This virus is doing it all by itself). Normally I'd ask him for cooking tips, but the plan in my head was already fairly formed.

I started by rubbing the pork skin with salt (generously) and seasoning the meat with salt and pepper. It then went into a preheated Gas mark 7 (225 degrees ish) for about 45 minutes, after which I turned the oven down to Gas mark 3 (150 degrees ish) and covered the meat tightly with a double layer of foil. The high heat at the start was to get the crackling well and truly started, and I felt that by then covering the meat over it would prevent the juices/ fat from evaporating in the oven. I'm not very scientific I could be completely wrong.

I left the pork in the oven cooking for 4 hours, whilst I napped, tidied and generally pottered (I love days like that, it could have only been better if I'd stayed in my pyjamas. But don't tell M, I don't think he's picked up on my slattern-like tendencies yet). I think this is what makes this an ideal weekend recipe, once it's in and the oven turned down, you can just leave it be.

After 4 hours I basted the pork with the fat that had rendered out from the joint and turned the oven back up higher to cook the roast potatoes. I popped the pork back in, minus the foil, but on some veggies - celery, carrots and onions, just roughly chopped, a bulb of garlic broken down into cloves (the cast is good for something) and a couple of bay leaves. This was purely because that was what I had in the fridge, you could easily amend it to suit you. I intended to recreate my get-ahead gravy by bashing these into submission with my potato masher to make gravy, but next time I might add butternut squash and parsnips which I would take out first.

When the meat went back in, I turned the oven back up to crisp up the crackling - and as a happy accident the edges of the meat. About 15 minutes before the potatoes were done I took the meat out, wrapped the joint back up in the foil and left it to rest. I added about a pint of water to the meat tin, and as with the get ahead gravy, bashed 7 bells out of the veggies, scraping up the goodness from the bottom of the tin, until it was all combined, and then strained it through a colander into a jug. I didn't add flour this time so it was more watery gravy than the Christmas one, but I enjoyed this as it was.

I served the meat and potatoes with some steamed savoy cabbage and carrots, tart applesauce and it made a lovely, undemanding comforting dish. Just what is needed at this time of year. And cheap, as I didn't buy any veggies or anything other than the pork. The meat was so well cooked that it just fell apart and I shredded it with 2 forks (bearing in mind one of those is still encased in purple plaster) before serving. The combination of the soft yielding meat with crispy crackling, flavourful gravy, with lightly steamed veggies and crispy potatoes was just what the doctor ordered. Although not quite enough to ward off the virus it did set me up for a week in which my staple diet has been marmite toast and tea 

This would work equally well with a lamb shoulder, although I'd be inclined to make small cuts and put extra garlic and rosemary inside them.  

Penelope's Pantry patient pork
(picture free, because it was just that good, that we started picking as soon as I put it on plates)

Shoulder of pork - ask your butcher to score the skin, and to advise you on how much - I went by size which is probably of little help but it was about a six inch wide piece
Sea salt
Pepper
Vegetables: I used celery, carrots and onions
Bulb of garlic
Couple of bay leaves (truly I added these because the packet keeps falling over in the cupboard and annoying me. I keep adding them to things at the mo purely for that reason)

Apple sauce, I cooked down 2 eating apples because that was what I had. Just peel, chop and cook with no sugar until they're pulpy. 
Vegetables and potatoes to serve.

Make sure your fat is scored and rub in salt
Cook in a preheated (225 degrees) oven for an hour
Turn the heat down (150 degrees) and cover the meat in foil tightly
Put back in the oven for 4 hours
Baste the pork with the fat from the tin
Remove from oven, put veggies, garlic and bay leaves on the bottom of your roasting tin and put the pork back on top
After an hour (or so, I went by eye) remove the pork, wrap tightly in the foil and add water to your baking tray. Put it on the heat and bash the veggies, garlic et al up with a potato masher. When you're happy with the consistency strain through a seive or colander and pour into a warmed jug.
Shred the pork with 2 forks (remove the crackling first)
Serve with your chosen veg, potatoes and applesauce.