This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 9 May 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

We seem to be having a rather carb-heavy, vaguely Italian themed week this week – lasagne for two nights, pizza for another two meals and a ravioli experiment on Friday. Mmm carb-heavy vaguely Italian food ;)

Sunday brunch – scrambled eggs I got up too late to have them, just had cereal instead ;)
Sunday dinner – curry, weeee! we heart curry

Monday lunch – bread with cheese & pickles
Monday dinner – lasagne using one of the frozen portions of John’s special pasta sauce & a whole heap of veg, with salad

Tuesday lunch – bread & cheese etc fish and chips
Tuesday dinner – leftover lasagne, with salad bread & cheese etc

Wednesday lunch – samosas with salad
Wednesday dinner – movie night pizza leftover lasagne, with salad

Thursday lunch – leftover pizza (if there is any); if not, just bread & stuff
Thursday dinner – chicken & mushroom egg fried rice

Friday lunch – french toast with bacon (because I want it for brunch on Saturday but won’t be here ;) )
Friday dinner – experimental homemade ravioli…!

The week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 2 May 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

I didn’t do a meal plan last week because by the time I sat down to write it after the long weekend, it was Tuesday and nearly half way through the week already. I also thought I’d see what it was like to not have one – John kept asking “what’s on the meal plan for dinner tonight?” — I think we’re getting reliant on them already!

Sunday brunch – scrambled eggs & muffins
Sunday dinner – John’s special pasta sauce (made with reduced to clear pork mince so it cost about 35p a portion, for five x2 portions – win! freezer full of homemade ready meals! hurrah for batch cooking!)

Monday brunch – scrambled eggs & muffins
Monday dinner – Marinaded turkey with veg stir-fry

Tuesday lunch – bread & cheese & olives & pickles
Tuesday dinner – pasta & sauce (the portion that didn’t get frozen)

Wednesday lunch – spicy chicken pieces with salad
Wednesday dinner – tuna bagel melts with salad

Thursday lunch – bread & cheese & olives & pickles
Thursday dinner – warm chorizo & potato salad, with wild garlic & poached egg

Friday lunch – bread & cheese & olives & pickles
Friday dinner – nachos (with loads of veg & beans so isn’t as “packet of crisps” as it sounds ;) )

Wild garlic and serrano ham pizza – mmm!

Posted by louisa on Thursday 21 April 2011 in cooking, recipes, wild food | 0 comments

We had wild garlic and serrano ham pizza for dinner last night. Our friend Strowger has repeatedly advocated wild garlic seed pods on pizza after we both pickled some last year but I hadn’t used the leafy stuff on pizza before.

I won’t do a full recipe – since I would have thought just about everyone reading this will have their own preferred dough & sauce recipe – but I will say I collected a large handful of wild garlic (Ramsons) leaves, which weighed about 50g including stalks – although I didn’t actually use any of the stalks on the pizza — they got sliced off and nibbled while I was cooking :)

I sliced the washed leaves into ribbons and wilted them slightly by frying them very lightly (30 seconds or so) in a drop of oil to mellow the flavour slightly, then immediately put them onto my prepared pizza. I paired it with serrano ham since that’s got enough flavour to hold its own against the WG – and added some flowers afterwards for prettification purposes ;)

And the verdict: well, the short version of thoughts is in the title for this post ;) John said it didn’t taste like any pizza he’d ever had before – but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I thought the wilted texture was perfect – very soft without being slippery – and the flavour more developed than the sharpness of raw wild garlic.

Next time, I’m almost tempted to leave off the ham though (it was still there but not the star of the show) and just have some different cheese and perhaps some ricotta or sliced mozzaralla – basically a more intensely flavoured spinach-and-ricotta style pie.

This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Our grow-our-own salad isn’t quite ready – such a shame as it would be very useful this summery week!

(John was out for a family lunch thing yesterday so I just snacked on leftovers/cheese’n’crackers as needed – no meal planning required ;) )

Monday lunch: scrambled eggs on toast
Monday dinner: pasta with tuna, olives, sweetcorn & chillis

Tuesday lunch: bread’n’cheese’n’stuff
Tuesday dinner: risotto – possibly chicken & red pepper, with salad

Wednesday lunch: bread’n’cheese’n’stuff
Wednesday dinner: pizza

Thursday lunch: falafel in pittas with raita and salad
Thursday dinner: hot chorizo & poached egg salad

Friday lunch: samosas and bean salad
Friday dinner: burgers with salad (and any leftover bean salad)

Saturday brunch: sausage sandwiches
Saturday dinner: enchiladas (or possibly a curry with friends)

This week’s meal plan: returning to normal

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 2 comments

So last week was pretty chaotic – but by and large, I did avoid resorting to junk food — by missing dinner just about every night. I underestimated how long I’d be at the theatre each night and was rarely home before midnight – so I was grateful that I’d planned decent sized lunches! The show went surprisingly well – after three less than promising dress/tech rehearsals, we and the kids were all really thrown when they did a stellar job on opening night. We had lots of good audience feedback too, hurrah. :)

Anyway, this week, we’re back to normal – actually better than normal since my classes are cancelled over Easter – so hopefully we’ll stick to our plan!

Monday lunch: toast & cheese
Monday dinner: pasta carbonara

Tuesday lunch: bread & hummus, and pickles
Tuesday dinner: sweet chilli turkey & veg stirfry with noodles

Wednesday lunch: sandwiches
Wednesday dinner: homemade pizza

Thursday lunch: leftovers from either lunch or dinner on Tuesday
Thursday dinner: roast lamb with green beans & carrots

Friday lunch: egg mayo ploughman’s salad thing
Friday dinner: chicken enchiladas with salad

Weekly meal plan: the lots of quick meals week

Posted by louisa on Monday 4 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 3 comments

As I mentioned last week, this week is show week for my drama classes – we had our first dress rehearsal last night and … it’s going to be a long week. I didn’t get as much put in the freezer last week as I hoped either – and our store cupboard supplies are low because we’ve not been to the supermarket for a big shop in … a month?. John and I have also both woken up this morning with sore throats/swollen glands. It’s going to be a very long week.

Monday lunch – pastrami with toasted sourdough bread and pickles
Monday dinner – pasta with John’s pasta sauce (from the freezer), and salad

Tuesday lunch – either scrambled eggs or beans on toast
Tuesday dinner – chilli-glazed pork chops with carrots & green beans

Wednesday lunch – chicken pieces & salad and bread
Wednesday dinner – pasta with tuna, sweetcorn, olives & chillis before I go or possibly curry (from the freezer) after I return

Thursday lunch – some sort of dal and rice (pindi channa if I can find my recipe; something with lentils if I can’t)
Thursday dinner – boiled eggs & soldiers :)

Friday lunch – leftover dal & rice
Friday dinner – possibly, probably, something on the way home from the theatre

Saturday brunch – fry-up, hells yeah.
Saturday dinner – pizza at aftershow party