No cooking day

Gemma's P, you did make me laugh saying you thought Marmite sounded like an animal!  Sorry, I assumed everyone in the world had heard of it.  Have you heard of Vegemite, or Bovril?  Similar things.  Marmite is a brown sticky spread for toast or sandwiches, very salty and deeply savoury, it's yeast extract, a by-product of beer making.  You either love it or hate it (that's the slogan they use!) - I love it, having been brought up on it, husband hates it.  Well, actually, to tell the truth I prefer the Aussie version, Vegemite, nowadays (don't throw stones at me for betraying my country!! haha).  The texture of Marmite has changed in recent years, it seems to be softer and runnier than it used to be, whereas Vegemite has a firmer texture which I like and a slightly different taste.  Bovril is beef extract, in case you didn't know, it's generally used more for gravy or as a hot drink.  I hate that, whereas husband really likes Bovril!!  Go figure!

Something light for lunch today....husband will probably have the last of the roast beef in a sandwich, I might just have a slice of the banana and cinnamon cake I made yesterday, with a coffee.

No cooking....we're going out for dinner, a 4-course meal for Valentine's Day, a very rare event!

Smoked mackerel pasta salad and no cook dinner

Not much in the way of cooking today, as it's mostly ready cooked things from the freezer.

For lunch I'll do a smoked mackerel pasta salad - there are 2 packs of smoked mackerel in the freezer that were bought when they were reduced a lot.  I'll cook some wholewheat pasta twists (well, it's hardly cooking!) and mix with some veggies....sweetcorn from the freezer, sliced gherkins and spring onion, with a horseradish mayo stirred through.  Served on some salad leaves.

Dinner will be a different thing each.  There's a single portion of leftover chicken stew in the freezer, and one of beef curry....I'll have the chicken.  We'll have them with brown rice, again a previously cooked tub in the freezer, enough for two.  They'll all be thoroughly reheated until piping hot in the oven, I'll put a banana cake in there too, as there's a couple of bananas going brown.  

I forgot to mention this week's shopping out of the £100 food budget.  Went to Morrisons this time, as I needed a few things that I can't get in Lidl or Aldi, like Marmite rice cakes (love them) and some dog food that Betty particularly likes.  Spent £33.68, giving a running total of £55.99, leaving £44.01 for the rest of this month.  That will do fine, we still don't need much.

From the freezer today:-

1 pack of smoked mackerel
Sweetcorn kernels
1 portion chicken stew
1 portion beef curry
Cooked brown rice

Anonymous comments

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Continuing with freezer leftovers

Yesterday's food pics:-

Hummus, had it for lunch today as well.

Cheesy French bread toasts....delicious, they all got eaten yesterday.

The beef and veg pie.  We were going to have the other half for lunch today, but changed our minds....it's been frozen for a dinner another day.  There was so much hummus left, we had that with crackers and some olives instead.

For dinner tonight, it's cauliflower & broccoli cheese - made a double portion of it about a month ago and froze the other half.  I've also taken out some jacket potatoes I'd cooked and frozen previously, I'm going to cut them into wedges and dust with spicy Cajun seasoning before reheating in the oven.  We'll have some frozen veg too, so it's a meat-free day today.

From the freezer today:-

Cauli/broccoli cheese
Jacket potato wedges
Peas and sweetcorn

But half the meat pie from yesterday went back in! 

Hummus, cheesy toasts, beef & veg pie

It feels like we've had weeks of heavy rain (well, it's been heavy showers, not continuous rain, but enough to have standing water and thick mud in the fields and partially flooded lanes) and very strong, bitterly cold winds.  To be fair, there has been some sunshine too, just in very short bursts most of the time.  Well, today has dawned with a mostly blue sky, no rain, a lot less cold and not much wind, and it's forecast to be like this all week.  Marvellous!  Just to qualify....when I say not much wind - it's always windy here, there's nothing much between us and the Bristol channel which is only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, but it's just normal wind, not the kind that brings tears to your eyes and practically blows you off your feet.  So we might actually be able to get out in the garden to start tidying up, pruning and weeding, and preparing for the year's food growing.  Well, husband does the food growing, I do the pretty flowery stuff in the front garden.

So this week we're eating out of the freezer every day, I've done an inventory and week's menu plan.  I'm specifically talking about using up all the odds and ends of leftover meals, cooked veggies, etc, that have accumulated in the freezer, not shop bought packs of veg, meat, fish fingers and the like.  Not wanting to waste anything, I always freeze the leftovers of meals and veg, but it means we end up with numerous pots and bags of stuff that languish in there forever and take up space.  So I've devised a week of meals that'll use up as much as possible of the oddments and leftovers.

Today for lunch I'm making hummus using a pot of frozen chickpeas (I cooked a whole bag of dried chickpeas at once weeks ago, freezing them in portions, there's just one left).  We'll have it with cheesy French bread toasts - a brown French baguette that's been in the freezer for ages, sliced thinly and topped with grated cheese, sliced spring onion and mayo, then baked in the oven.

For dinner it'll be a pie using homemade shortcrust pastry from the freezer, filled with diced beef left from yesterday's dinner, a mix of chopped veg both from yesterday and some from the freezer, and leftover horseradish gravy.  I made enough gravy yesterday purposely to use some in the pie.  The pie will make 4 portions, we'll have the remainder for lunch tomorrow.

From the freezer today:-

Chickpeas
Small brown baguette
Pastry
Leftover cooked veg

Freezer week and answers to comments

This week I really must try to use more stuff out of the freezer....whilst we have had a few frozen things recently, I've also batch cooked and added more stuff to the freezer.  Doesn't really help in the short term, when there's so much in it already that I have a job finding anything.  So it's going to be a week of taking out at least one (preferably more) frozen item each day, and not putting anything back in.  If we have any leftovers from a meal, I'll incorporate them into the next day's meal or have them for lunch, rather than shoving them in the freezer as I usually do.

Roast beef today, a small joint that we managed to find a couple of weeks ago, reduced to half price.  There will be leftovers, I'm sure, so a beef pie or curry tomorrow.  Probably a pie, I have homemade pastry in the freezer so that's one thing I can take out tomorrow.

The scones - well, they were so light and fluffy, I'm definitely going to use all yogurt in them from now on.  Janice, the idea of using flavoured yogurt in sweet scones is brilliant.  And Gemma's Person, I bet pecans in scones are delicious, I love pecans, must try that.  Your cinnamon rolls and savoury rolls sound wonderful.

I'd forgotten about the Lime Drizzle Cake, TA, I'm glad you liked it.  Goldensunflower, happy birthday for Tuesday....yes go on, make yourself a cake!  You know there's no calories in birthday cakes, don't you?! ;-) 

Eloise, parsnip with apple and onion sounds great, I'd not thought of that.  Joy, yes I use yogurt for soda bread too, I make one every week (well, husband makes it sometimes) for an elderly neighbour who has various dietary issues and can't eat yeasted bread.

The mystery rissoles we had the other day....when they were defrosted it still wasn't obvious what was in them, I just couldn't remember how I'd made them.  I was a bit concerned that they might not be very tasty, hence why they'd been languishing in the freezer for several weeks.  So when reheating them (I did them in the oven, along with jacket potatoes), I put a sun dried tomato and some grated cheese on top of each one, so at least they'd have some taste!  They turned out to be sausagemeat with onion, tomato, rice and herbs, they were actually quite nice.  Does anyone remember the rissoles from years ago, frozen, made by Birds Eye or Ross I think?  We had them as children quite often, not totally sure what was in them but I think it was sausagemeat and chopped cooked egg, they were formed into patties, covered in breadcrumbs, Mum shallow fried them and served them with chips and beans usually.

Marlene, that's a really nice thing to say, thank you.  I love to cook and my imagination runs riot when I'm making something, I quite often do something different on the spur of the moment, thinking 'Oh I know, I could add...whatever..., that'll be good'.

Parsnip & bacon frittata, cheese scones, chowder

I had a large wrinkled parsnip that needed using up yesterday, not used it in a frittata before but thought it would go well with bacon for lunch.  So I peeled and grated it, then fried it gently along with 2 bacon rashers cut up small, and a couple of sliced spring onions.  Added 5 beaten eggs and some grated cheese, cooked it for a couple of minutes until it was set on the bottom, then finished it off under the grill.  We had it with tinned tomatoes, it was lovely, the parsnip made it taste quite sweet and creamy, even.

Made cheese scones to go with the chowder for dinner.  I usually use yogurt and milk mixed together for scones, I sometimes add an egg, sometimes not.  This time I did use an egg, but all yogurt instead of half yogurt, half milk, because I had some Greek yogurt that was past the use by date (it smelt and tasted fine, it lasts for ages anyway) and I wanted to finish it up.  The scones were yummy, probably the lightest ever, even husband commented on them.

I had a nice chunky piece of smoked haddock in the freezer (which turned out to be smoked cod but no matter!), so decided to make chowder....we were going to have creamy smoked mackerel pasta but I didn't fancy pasta yesterday.  So I diced a large potato and chopped up a leek (still from the garden, there are still loads there), frying them in a large pan.  Added some chicken stock, along with Italian seasoning (husband spoke to me as I was shaking it in, so rather more than I anticipated went in, it still tasted fine, if a bit herby, but was a nice shade of green!) and some pepper.  Threw in some frozen sweetcorn and peas, simmered it for about 20 mins, then added some milk.  Meanwhile, I microwaved the cod for a couple of minutes, then flaked it up when it had cooled a bit....I always flake fish by hand as it's the easiest way to feel for any bones.  When the veg in the chowder was cooked, I stirred in the fish and a big splash of cream, heating it through again gently.  Yum.

Sorry I didn't take a photo of the frittata, completely forgot.  My photos, taken on my phone, aren't brilliant anyway.