Menu Planning Monday (I have to start back somehow!)

Ok so it has been too long without blogging. I guess I have to start back at sometime and as i have no mental energy just now to be overly creative I thought I'd start with what I did today.

Menu Planning.

Infact I did this in bed last night in an attempt to get ahead of myself today. This week I am on holiday. Much needed rest for my brain! It is also the crunch week for our current renovations. The Fireplace came this morning, the decorator comes on wednesday and Nigel is looking forward to this weekend as I go to a women conference and he gets to do uninterrupted DIY :-)

So i made a list of all the things I want to accomplish this week. Perhaps the list is a bit enthusiastic but in fairness some of it includes what I normally do so I have an extra 3 days (in theory) to get through the rest of it. Perhaps I'll fill you in on my progress as the week goes on.

So as it is a week of holiday I though I should do some things that I will enjoy. So the menu plan this week has  lots of new untested meals on it. Consequently there was a bit of a gulp at the checkout in the supermarket today. However many of the meals are for atleast 4 people and so there will be left overs for next week :-) I hope to try out a couple of Crockpot dishes for my new Slow cooker ( the fruit of some Christmas money) and make a few things we haven't had in a while.

Menu Plan:

Breakfast: Fend for yourself, Toast and Cereal

Lunch: Soup and Rolls most likely.

Dinner:

Mon: Sheperd Pie (this is now ready and smells good) with roast parsnips and frozen green beans

Tue: Griddled Tuna Steaks with Courgette and Pepper, served with Couscous (al a Ainslie Harriot)

Wed: Crockpot meal 1, Lamb Pilaf

Thurs: Spagetti Carbonara, cooked the proper way from scratch with eggs!(hmmm, have to see how this works out) served with salad and bread

Fri: Crockpot Meal 2: Honeypork served with RIce

Sat: Frozen Pizza (Nigel in on his own, and he wanted something quick and easy)

Sun: Fish Cakes, (I'll try to make these before we go to Church) salad and bread

Extras: Banana Loaf/Muffins (to use up the bananas that are trying to run out of the kitchen) and a batch of Cookies for Nigel to take to work.

So there we go. Now I have a new fireplace to polish, some routine chores to do and then a delightful evening of painting wood work. Enjoy your monday, do check back with me later in the week.

Frugal Friday - Chocolate Quesadillas!

I have decided that frugal Friday to me means making the use of some of the leftovers in my kitchen to avoid a repeat trip to the supermarket before Monday! Although today I did go back to pick up some ingredients to make a meal to take to my aging Grandparents tomorrow. I think this is ok! :-)

So my frugal tip today is to make Chocolate Quesadillas. I had some left over tortilla's and wondered what I could do with them so I made a chocolate quesadilla. I heated my griddle pan, spread a moderate layer of chocolate spread on one half of the tortilla, folded it over then toasted/grilled it in the pan.

Oh so yummy. Not the healthiest lunch in the world but one of the tastiest! and a great way to use up left over tortillas. It reminded me of chocolate crepes from the German Market at Christmas. Mmmmm :-)

Meal Planning Monday

Well I have been searching around for good homemaking inspiration over these past few weeks and have been learning a lot. This morning Crystal at Biblical Womanhood encouraged us to do a number of things but one of them was do share the meal plan for that day. Now I have become a bit obsessed with meal planning. I plan our menus every week on monday morning and then go and do the shop! We now have a plan stuck to the kitchen cupboard door and my husband knows exactly what is coming on any particular day. I share this thing I do with a number of people from time to time and often initally sound surprised and then pause and think and consider that it might be a good idea.

So why is it a good idea for us? Well one thing is my husband eats his lunch in his works canteen, they have nutritious, filling, reasonably priced food and so it seems a good idea for now. However, before I meal planned, I often suggested a meal for the evening only to find he had already had the same thing for lunch! Also as I work 3 days a week and often don't get in until 7pm. Before I meal planned if Nigel arrived home before me he would look bewildered through the cupboards and fridge unsure what to put together.

So what advantages does meal planning bring. I can come home late from work and know there is a small chance dinner might be getting started, I can produce a meal and know that if hubbie had it for lunch aswell it is his own fault! And finally I buy less food, throw less away and can make a few meals up on monday for the week ahead (just as I did today, spaghetti sauce for wednesday and meat sauce for a lasagne on sunday!)

Back to today, so I planned to use a recipe I picked up in Sainsburys this evening, from Jamie Oliver's "feed your family for a fiver" range, the fishcakes one. Sadly for Sainsburys I actually did my shop in Tesco's so they didn't really benefit! Anyway the result was very pleasing, the pre-cooked version is shown here.

The recipe said to cook them for 15 minutes but I found they hadn't crisped up very well so I left them in for another 5-10mins. Served them with salad and a little bit of warm crusty bread. They were delicious and very filling! I forgot to photograph the finished item until after we had eaten. However there was one left and so I just manged to catch it. All in all I can thoroughly recommend the recipe. It may even become one of my entertaining recipes! (Although not for my mother as she really doesn't like fish!)

And finally what does the week ahead hold as a result of meal planning monday. Left over cold meat and baked potatoes tomorrow, spag bol on wednesday, beef rendang on thursday, out at friends on friday, left overs sat and lasagne sunday.  I lvoe meal planning mondays :-)

Frugal Fridays

Having been encouraged by a number of frugal Friday posts I thought I would add a couple of my own frugal activities into the pot.

The first is really all down to my husband. Last year my parents kindly gave us some money at Christmas for us to use in our new garden. We decided to buy a BBQ. However we are a couple that researches just about every big thing (and often little things too) that we buy. The BBQ ended up being a hasty exception to this usual behaviour. We knew we wanted a gas BBQ and so we went out to buy one. The local DIY shop had a good deal on the one we bought and on our first trip out to investigate we also purchased. We got it home and in true style Nigel opened the box and got going. It wasn't until the entire thing was assembled and the box disposed that realisation struck. It had no lava rock! ie: it was essentially an outdoor gas hob with no authentic coals to add that special BBQ flavour. He was devastated, we tried to sell it on the local free ad website but to no avail. Last year was a BBQ free year needless to say, the sadness of a coal free BBQ was too much to bear. So this year as the nice weather approached we turned a corner. After much thought he totally re-engineered the BBQ and so now we have a gas BBQ with coals. Here is the re-engineering in action. I think this is a feat worthy of frugal friday :-)



So it falls to me to add the second offering. We have a lovely neighbour, who incidently has a garden that really puts our to shame, and she grows great quantities of Rhubarb. It is growing amazingly well in our surprisingly mild early summer and so, just as last year, she appeared at my door last week with an enormous bundle of rhubarb for us. Last year I searched for a number of recipes to help me use the fruit for more than just crumble. Whilst browsing the Nigella Lawson coobook I love (How to be a Domestic Godess..."If only!") I stumbled across this amazing recipe, Rhubarb Polenta Cake (also known as Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake). So this seemed like a great way to use the rhubarb. Now what makes this a frugal friday contribution is the other ingredients. The recipe requires Cornmeal. This is not something routinely available or indeed used in the UK but I had bought an enormous bag some months ago when I decided to make cornbread from another wonderful recipe book. In the end the recipe required very little of the 1kg bag I had bought and so it had been sitting for months not being used. Here was its chance! Secondly the recipe requires natural bio yogurt, 250g. In my fridge, reaching the end of its shelf life was exactly that amount of yogurt. So not only did I use the rhubarb but also my vat of cornmeal and my almost out of date yogurt.

The cake came out so well and was absolutely delicious. Here are the pics to prove it. Nigella rocks!