This week’s meal plan – it’s a curry-centric one! ;)

Posted by louisa on Sunday 27 February 2011 in cooking, frugal, weekly meal plans | 5 comments

We didn’t do great with our meal plan last week – I think the novelty of having one has started to wane but we’re keen to turn it into a habit so we’re going to keep trying with it. Actually, looking at it again, we did have most of the meals we’d planned, just not in the right order. And the one meal we didn’t have – Spanish omelette – didn’t result in anything being wasted – we had to go to the supermarket to buy potatoes and ended up getting something else instead. Anyway, onward and upward:

Sunday night – meal out – curry, woo! (we’re leaving very soon so double woo! ;) )

Monday lunch – soup & bread
Monday dinner – chicken & red pepper risotto with salad

Tuesday lunch – curried egg mayo sandwiches
Tuesday dinner – jacket potato & tuna with salad

Wednesday lunch – falafel in pitta with salad & raita
Wednesday dinner – keema & channa achar (a lamb mince & chickpea curry)

Thursday lunch – pitta with meat/cheese
Thursday dinner – smoked mackerel kedgeree

Friday lunch – bread & meat/cheese
Friday dinner – frittata

Chocolate Coffee Mousse recipe

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 23 February 2011 in cooking, Featured, recipes | 5 comments

I stumbled upon this recipe a little while ago and it’s become a favourite in the Peach household – not only is it one of the nicest, richest desserts I’ve ever eaten, it both uses up eggs (a good thing!) and is really pretty easy & quick to make as well.

It’s easy because it cheats by starting with ready-made chocolate. I’ve tried making it with both fancy 70% chocolate and cheaper plain stuff (I mean really cheap plain stuff – Netto, two 200g bars for £1.50) – there is a difference, the former was obviously a lot stronger and richer, but you know what? the cheaper stuff did pretty well too. The intense strong chocolate is nice but can be a bit overwhelming – I’d certainly make it again with the cheaper stuff, especially if the people eating it weren’t major dark chocolate fans.

Regarding the coffee, John is a coffee snob so we have very good beans in the house pretty much all the time and he makes it using an Aeropress which apparently removes a lot of the bitterness (I don’t like to drink coffee but I like it as a flavour in cakes & desserts). Since it was being mixed with other things, he didn’t use his super expensive stuff but used a blend of “old” beans (admittedly no more than a few weeks old) to make the espresso. I dare say the fact it was good coffee to start with added to the flavour of the finished dessert.

Aside from that though, eggs is eggs, a little sugar is a little sugar. If the eggs are homegrown (as ours are), the only real cost is the chocolate, with an extra 20p or so for the fancy-smancy coffee. For a super rich dessert for four, I think it’s pretty reasonable.

This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 21 February 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 3 comments

We’re getting a bit better at sticking to meal plans – not great, but better. A couple of shuffles last week but again, it’s generally wonderful to know what’s in the offing.

Sunday dinner – Pasta with John’s special pasta sauce (frozen leftovers from a previous batch) and salad

Monday lunch – some veg things John bought while I wasn’t there so don’t know what they are, with bread
Monday dinner – Spanish omelette (possibly with sweet potato, pepper & chorizo)

Tuesday lunch – hopefully not fish and chips but I get *bullied* into it every week when Strowger comes to visit. I blame him totally. I don’t even like fish and chips. And especially not curry sauce. Mmm curry sauce – I mean, urgh, curry sauce.
Tuesday dinner – pork chops with a mustard & chilli glaze with green beans & carrots

Wednesday lunch – ham/cheese sandwiches
Wednesday dinner – (I’m in for once – half term) egg fried rice (possibly with mushrooms, possibly other stuff)

Thursday lunch – bread, meat & salad/pickles
Thursday dinner – pasta with tuna, olives & chillis (since that was one of the things we swapped out last week)

Friday lunch – samosas & misc bits
Friday dinner – burgers with salad (the other thing we swapped out last week)

Meal planning: this week’s menu

Posted by louisa on Sunday 13 February 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 3 comments

Ok, last week – our first attempt at sticking to a meal plan – was a bit of a failure. It went up in flames on day TWO. We’d forgotten John was going out in the afternoon/evening for a talk so had to change lunch to make it more filling (and some people came for lunch too), and I worked late and forgot I was supposed to make the casserole anyway (John ate the sausages for breakfasts instead). Aside from that though (and having to find something else on Thursday, which was supposed to be leftover casserole day), we stuck to it and it worked well — I knew on Friday afternoon that I’d have to take a break mid-afternoon to start the pizza dough rather than waiting to start until the evening, and it had plenty of time to rise beautifully.

Here is our plan for this week – and hopefully there won’t be any unexpected events!

Sunday brunch – bacon butties, mmm bacon
Sunday dinner – courgette & chorizo frittata, with salad

Monday lunch – falafel in pittas with raita (made with leftover yoghurt), with salad leftover chicken from Saturday night, with rice
Monday dinner – fry up (leftover bacon, mushrooms, hash browns, beans, & eggs – breakfast for dinner ;) )

Tuesday lunch – sigh, I’m going to just accept it – fish and chips probably; if not, something with hard boiled eggs as we’ve some older ones to use up
Tuesday dinner – chicken & bean enchiladas, with salad

Wednesday lunch – bread with a selection of cheese, meat & pickles (our default lunch option)
Wednesday dinner – (I’m out until 10pm) leftover enchiladas, with salad

Thursday lunch – John will probably be out; I’ll have the same as Wednesday
Thursday dinner – pasta with tuna, olives, chillis & parmesan

Friday lunch – something with eggs – scrambled eggs with chorizo? boiled eggs? tbc!
Friday dinner – burgers with salad

(Not planning for Saturday & Sunday this week as I’m out all day both days; I imagine John will have eggs for brunch then possibly go out or get take out later in the day.)

Meal planning: our lunches & dinners this week

Posted by louisa on Monday 7 February 2011 in cooking, eating, frugal, weekly meal plans | 6 comments

We’re not very good a meal planning. We usually manage it for the three or four days following our monthly big trip to the supermarket. I know they’re a really good idea – saving money, reducing food waste etc – but we’re quite quite rubbish at anything that involves personal organisation.

Often we’ll not even think about what we want for dinner until it’s already 8pm and we’re both blood-sugar crashing. When that happens we’re more likely to turn to ordering take-in or running to the (nearby, expensive) shop for something quick – which invariably means buying something junky for dinner and spending extra money because we’re hungry and everything looks sooooo good.

Our lunches are the same – we usually don’t think about them until we need to eat and they have to be ready quickly so we can take the dog out and get back to work in good time. Lunches are a lot cheaper for us now we both work from home than they were when we were similar disorganised and worked in offices – but they rely on what we’ve got in or another trip to the expensive shop. And I think they generate the bulk of our food waste – loaves bought in or made for lunches and not finished before they go stale etc.

So here we go – my first attempt at a week’s meal plan:

Monday lunch – boiled eggs & toast (I had food poisoning or a tummy bug over the weekend and am still feeling a little delicate. This is our favourite poorly tummy food)
Monday dinner – pasta with herby sausages & peppers in a tomato sauce

Tuesday lunch – spicy butternut squash soup (to be made this evening) with bread (which will need buying/making), & cheese
Tuesday dinner – spicy sausage & lentil casserole (the last of the sausages that need using up) with veg

Wednesday lunch – more spicy butternut squash soup with bread & cheese
Wednesday dinner – a difficult meal slot as I’m out until 10pm – keema achar curry (made by John last week, now in the freezer) either with rice or chapattis & naan (depending if he can be bothered making them fresh)

Thursday lunch – John will probably be out so probably just more soup & bread for me
Thursday dinner – leftover sausage & lentil casserole and veg (will need to buy something green)

Friday lunch – our random version of a ploughman’s lunch with samosas (from the petrol station … yes! I know! but strangely they’re some of the best samosas we’ve ever eaten and only 60p each!) and pickles
Friday dinner – homemade pizza – tuna & chilli, and chorizo & peppers (need to buy mozzarella)

Saturday brunch – scrambled eggs & muffins/crumpets (to buy, whichever are on offer)
Saturday dinner – spicy marinaded chicken pieces (need to buy the chicken) & rice

Right, let’s see how much we stick to it!

Baking – an art or a science?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 3 February 2011 in cooking | 2 comments

I’ve noticed recently that people seem to be divided between considering cooking, and baking in particular, an art or a science.

“Baking is an art” people seem to use recipes as inspiration rather than the letter of the law – ingredients are adjusted depending on personal tastes. Measurements & timings are vague and rely on knowing appropriate textures, colour etc. Results are inconsistent until recipes have been tried many, many times.

“Baking is a science” people follow recipes a lot more closely, don’t substitute/add extra ingredients and measure things exactly. They have opinions on weight versus volume, and even weigh liquids as it’s more accurate. Results are reasonably consistent from the get go.

As in life, I’m more of an “art” person – which is why my recipes are sometimes a bit vague with measurements – such as the soda bread recipe says use between “250-300ml” of soured milk. Like the soda bread, our slow rise no knead bread needs slightly different amount of liquids each time we make it – depending, seemingly, on the type of flour and the temperature of the liquid – so for me, dough texture is more important than exact quantities. I’m a bit more (but admittedly) not a lot more scientific the first few times I make something – until I begin to understand what it should be like. I find it more fun to freewheel than to stick to the recipe – but my results are sometimes inconsistent – taking a recently relevant example from cooking in general, sometimes my chilli rocks the free world, sometimes it struggles to rock our living room: edible but meh.

(Funnily enough, I’ve got more exact about favourite recipes after I’ve written them up for here because I’ve made them to the exact recipe for a few times before publishing it and have started to enjoy the consistency – before, I’d just throw a random amount of mustard seeds into kedgeree but now I use 1tsp like a good girl ;) )

Where do you stand? Do you stick to recipes exactly or throw things in at random? Do you favour a more creative process or a more consistent result? Or are you somewhere in the middle?