Meal Planning Monday #11

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It's National Vegetarian Week this week, and because of this you'll find no omnivore meals on my menu planner. I know that there's not usually a huge amount, but Mr. TheBoyandMe can have a meat-free week and like it!

  • Sunday: The freezer is full of God knows what, so we need to start eating that up!
  • Monday: Pizza (caramelised red onion, spinach and blue cheese) and salad.
  • Tuesday: Mediterranean vegetables and rice, with grilled halloumi
  • Wednesday: Sticky Sausage Stew. I keep putting this on my planner and I keep failing to cook it which is daft because it's gorgeous.
  • Thursday: Chinese (earlier than normal)
  • Friday: Quorn Lasagne
  • Saturday: LONDON BABY! (More about that later!)

And I still haven't planned in fajitas, which is ridiculous because we both love them. Next week! Maybe…

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I'm linking this up to Mrs. M's Meal Planning Monday

Meal Planning Monday #10

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I'm a bit over food at the moment. With the ongoing battles with The Boy and his being awkward at mealtimes, I really can't muster the enthusiasm to cook. This week's plan is a little boring and bland as a result but hey-ho.

  • Sunday: blue cheese and asparagus tartlets, with tomato and basil rice.
  • Monday: Mediterranean vegetables and rice, with halloumi (recipe to follow).
  • Tuesday: Pizza and wedges.
  • Wednesday: Vegetable and cheese pasties, salad and wedges.
  • Thursday: Sticky Sausage Stew (slow cooker)
  • Friday: Chinese!
  • Saturday: Spring Greens Risotto – asparagus, broccoli, peas, courgettes with blue cheese.

Hardly going to set the world alight but I've done it. Hopefully next week I'll feel more with it to enjoy planning.

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I'm linking this up to Meal Planning Monday at Mrs. M's

Meal Planning Monday #9

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We've had an impromptu visit to family this weekend (but still managed to have a Chinese on Saturday night) and so for once I'm actually planning on a Monday, as opposed to a Sunday when I normally do it.

My plan this week involves using up food already in the house because we're running out of freezer/cupboard space and that's ridiculous. We've also got the BT phone bill due next week, and The Boy's birthday plus a holiday and Britmums Live next month, so I'm now on an economy drive. Nothing apart from bread and milk will be purchased this week!

  • Sunday: away
  • Monday: Quorn escalope with gruyere cheese/chicken and mushroom pie (freezer food), potato wedges and peas.
  • Tuesday: Meatballs and spaghetti (yes I know I've missed out the 'a' in spaghetti).
  • Wednesday (late work night): Cheese & vegetable pasties, potato wedges and salad.
  • Thursday:Pasta and vegetable salad.
  • Friday: Chinese! (Of course!)
  • Saturday: Risotto and ciabatta bread (mix in cupboard). I think I'm going to do a primaverdi and parmesan version to try and welcome in Spring and Summer. I may even partake of Pimm's alongside it.

There you go, hardly inspiring but it will work for me.

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I'm linking this up to Meal Planning Monday at Mrs. M's

Coffee Cupcakes

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As we haven't made any cakes in a while and the weather is horrendous, The Boy and I have just been baking.

Coffee Cupcakes

Ingredients:

  • 110g self-raising flour
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 100g Stork Baking Liquid*
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 tsp of espresso powder dissolved in a small amount of hot water.
  1. Cream the caster sugar and Stork Baking Liquid together. As the 'butter' is already a liquid, it is far easier to mix, especially for little ones. There's also a handy measuring marker down the side of the bottle for easy dispensing.
  2. Mix in the egg, add a little flour if it starts to curdle. Mine always curdles; this time? It didn't.
  3. Add the remaining flour and baking powder and mix.
  4. Stir in the coffee mixture. (I added 10g more flour to counter this additional liquid).
  5. Bake for 14 minutes on 180°C.
  6. Top with coffee flavoured buttercream (2 tsp of coffee added to a basic recipe. NB: I found that I needed a bit more than 1/4 Stork Baking Liquid to a bit less than 3/4 icing sugar. Incidentally, it is the best buttercream that I have ever made; smooth, creamy and the icing sugar didn't go everywhere.)
  7. Eat and enjoy!

I was sent the product marked * for the purpose of trial. My opinion (that it's really easy to use and made the cakes tasty and light) is honest and unbiased.

Slow Cooked Sticky Sausage Stew (Vegetarian)

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I made a sausage stew the other week in the slow cooker and it went quite well, but I think adding the yoghurt/cream was a mistake. It's not the type of thing to make creamy, it needs to be rich and dark to really work.

Sticky Sausage Stew

slow cooked sausage

Ingredients:

  • handful of mushrooms
  • half a leek
  • knob of butter
  • carrots, sugar snaps, and green beans (or any other vegetables lying around)
  • half a butternut squash
  • 6 meat-free sausages (I used Quorn but Cauldron Lincolnshire would work well too)
  • 200ml of hot water
  • 2 tablespoons of mango chutney
  • 2 tablespoons of gravy browning
  1. Sweat the chopped mushrooms and leek down in the knob of butter. Transfer to the slow-cooker (I have a swizzy slow-cooker that allows the pot to be used on the hob directly).
  2. Add the chopped vegetables and the water, stir in and leave for two hours on high.
  3. After two hours add the mango chutney, stir and cover for another hour on high.
  4. Add the sausages chopped into half or thirds and leave for another hour on medium.
  5. Stir in the gravy granules twenty minutes before serving.
  6. Serve with crusty bread and proper butter.

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Linking this up to Mediocre Mum's Slow Cooker Sunday and to Plus2Point4's Viva Veg

Meal Planning Monday #7

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Last week's meal plan by and large was stuck to with the exception of Saturday night's Chinese takeaway. We decided to go into Cardiff during the late afternoon and buy an iPad (as you do) and took our Tesco vouchers with us so we could have a meal at Pizza Express afterwards. Therefore, I moved the Chinese to Sunday because we don't like to miss it!

20120423-183645.jpg

  • Sunday: Chinese (home-made deep-fried tofu/takeaway chicken balls, sweet and sour sauce, crispy seaweed, egg fried rice, spring rolls and chips. Because I'm Welsh and that's how we roll around here!)
  • Monday: Dauphinoise potatoes, blue cheese and asparagus tartlets and salad.
  • Tuesday: freezer left-over Pizza Hut pizza and spicy potato wedges
  • Wednesday: Pasta and salad
  • Thursday: slow-cooked vegetable pasta (not tried this before, it will be a cheese/cream based pasta because I dislike tomato sauces on pasta)
  • Friday: Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagne (my brother, the chef, was supposed to be coming over last Friday and I cooked this for him, but mid-afternoon he had to cancel. He's coming this Friday instead so I shall cook it again)
  • Saturday: Mango and coconut paneer

Quite a few repetitive meals in this week's plan that make up our staple diet, but after two weeks off work for Easter and working an extra day due to INSET, I know I'm going to be knackered and need easy food. I'll get back on track with my imagination next week!

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I'm linking this up to Meal Planning Monday at Mrs. M's

Halloumi Salad & Herby Yoghurt Dressing

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I was recently sent some products from the Rachel's Organics range to try out some of their new Spring recipes. The Rachel's Organics website has some amazing and inventive recipes using their yoghurts, and there was me thinking that pouring it over banana in the morning was adventurous.

I've adapted the following recipe because I didn't have some of the ingredients, but the main ones are the same.

Halloumi Salad & Herby Yoghurt Dressing

For the salad:

  • 1 bag of mixed salad leaves
  • 1/2 cucumber, de-seeded
  • 1 orange pepper, de-seeded and finely sliced
  • 1 x 250g halloumi block, sliced thickly
  • Virgin olive oil

For the dressing:

  • 100g Rachel's Natural yogurt
  • 1tbsp of dill (they recommend a handful of coriander)
  • 1tbsp chopped mint
  • (recommended 1/2 red onion finely chopped and a garlic clove chopped, but I didn't have any)
  1. Begin by making the dressing, mix all the ingredients together and reserve in a bowl until ready to dress your salad. If you like your salad dressing smooth use a food processor to blitz.
  2. Toss together the salad leaves and cucumber in your serving dish.
  3. Grill/fry the halloumi until golden and slightly squidgy to touch.
  4. Lightly stir fry the orange pepper. Lay the halloumi and orange pepper over the salad leaves.
  5. Drizzle over the salad dressing and serve immediately.

I was sent some Rachel's Organics yoghurts for the purpose of testing the recipes. I wasn't asked to blog about them, I chose to.

Chocolate Easter Bread and Butter Pudding

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This has been sat in my drafts for a week and a half and I forgot about it! I could kick myself.

About a month ago I had some left over croissants that could have been used for missiles as opposed to anything edible. I decided to use them for a bread and butter pudding instead of throwing them out, especially good as I needed to use up two eggs before they went off and couldn't be bothered to make a cake.

When we came back from our Easter weekend away, I discovered that we seemed to have a plethora of hot cross buns that were more akin to rock cakes. Is it just me that finds they go stale really quickly? I hate throwing good food out, and so faced with six stale hot cross buns and too much Easter chocolate, I decided to make an Easter bread and butter pudding.

I used the trusty BBC Good Food Guide recipe which the kind @caroljs had pointed out to me and adapted it accordingly.

  • butter for greasing
  • chocolate spread (I used chocolate Philadelphia)
  • 4-6 Hot Cross Buns, sliced into quarters
  • 50g/2oz chocolate drops/chunks/bashed-up Easter egg
  • 2 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 250ml whole milk
  • 150ml single cream
  • 2 free-range eggs
  • 25g granulated sugar
  • 3tbsp of chocolate powder
  1. Grease a 1 litre/2 pint pie dish with butter.
  2. Cut the Hot Cross Buns into quarters. Spread each slice with on one side with chocolate spread.
  3. Arrange a layer of buns, buttered-side up, in the bottom of the dish, then add a layer of chocolate broken bits. Sprinkle with a little cinnamon, then repeat the layers of bread and chocolate, sprinkling with cinnamon, until you have used up all of the buns.
  4. Gently warm the milk and cream in a pan over a low heat to scalding point, but not boiling and bubbling point. Whisk in the chocolate powder.
  5. Crack the eggs into a bowl, add three quarters of the sugar and lightly whisk until pale.
  6. Add the warm milk and cream mixture and stir well, then strain the custard into a bowl.
  7. Pour the custard over the prepared bread layers and sprinkle with the remaining sugar and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
  8. Preheat the oven to 180C/355F/Gas 4.
  9. Place the dish into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the custard has set and the top is golden-brown.
  10. Serve warm with a dollop of dairy ice-cream or clotted cream.

Easter pudding

Meal Planning Monday #6

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I'm slacking off, I abandoned the stir-fry last week (because I realised fajitas and Chinese combined with that were too similar), and we had Pizza Hut instead. But I figure that for the most part I'm sticking to the plan, and I'm wasting less food and saving money so that's always a good thing. Our diet is more nutritious and balanced, and we're getting great use out of the slow cooker.

With the weather improving somewhat, the mood of our meals has lightened to take account of that; a few more Spring like meals on the menu this week. Plus I've been sent some Rachel's Organic yoghurts to try out some of their recipes, so I've planned a few meals based on that.

  • Sunday: Spring Sausage Stew (done in the slow cooker) and Fruit Cobbler
  • Monday: Fajitas (wraps that need using up from the end of last week)
  • Tuesday: Halloumi Salad with Herby Yoghurt Dressing
  • Wednesday: Pizza Hut pizza and chips (when Mr. TBaM went and bought pizza last week on our cop-out night, they had 2 for 1, so he came home with a spare one which we froze)
  • Thursday: Dauphinoise potatoes, blue cheese and leek tartlets (based on this recipe)
  • Friday: Lasagne (leftovers from the freezer, either with quorn or butternut squash and spinach)
  • Saturday: Chinese (I made deep fried tofu last week and it was gorgeous).

Next week, I think I'm going to have to do some batch-cooking on the Monday and Tuesday for the forthcoming weeks.  With the new term starting, I'm bound to be exhausted at first.

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I'm linking this up to Meal Planning Monday at Mrs. M's

Slow Cooker Sunday: Fruit Cobbler (Dessert)

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Now I know I've already posted one Slow Cooker Sunday recipe today, and I also know that I've also posted this recipe several months ago, but this is the first time I've tried doing the fruit (in fact any dessert) in the slow cooker. Plus it's my blog and I want to post it again, so there you go. I've used the slow cooker for the first part of the recipe as I have no idea if the cobbler bit would cook in it, another time I'll test that out.

Fruit Cobbler

Ingredients:
Serves 4-6

  • 800g of mixed fruit, I went for apples, plums, pears and nectarines
  • 160g caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 300g self raising flour, sifted
  • 85g unsalted butter, cubed
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 150g Rachel’s Low Fat Natural Bio Live Yogurt

Method:

  1. In the slow cooker take the fruit, 100g of the caster sugar and add the water, cook until the fruit softens. Tip: leave the fruit to cool before adding the cobbler pieces this will stop some of the fruit bubbling out over the dish.
  2. To make the cobbler, add the sifted flour, butter, baking powder and the remainder of the sugar (60g) and using a food processor or mixer whiz together for a few seconds on pulse speed until fine crumbs form.
  3. Add the milk and yogurt and whiz again until a soft dough forms . You can either spoon the mixture in scattered clumps over the fruit or add a little more flour and roll out the dough using a cutter. Leave some gaps for the cobble effect.
  4. Bake the cobbler for 30-35 minutes until the topping is golden and the fruit is visibly bubbling beneath.
  5. Serve with vanilla ice-cream, custard or clotted cream.

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Pop yourself over to Slow Cooker Sunday on Mediocre Mum to see other entries

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