Back to salads

We've been having too many carby things for breakfasts and lunches recently, getting into bad habits again, so we need to break that habit.

At the family wedding we went to last week, the food was gorgeous....a hog roast - enormous heated tray full of delicious pulled pork and stuffing, apple sauce on the side, rolls, new potatoes, and 4 kinds of salads, including Greek, a pasta salad, a simple garden salad and one with avocado and orange.  Eating them made me realise how much I've missed having salads for lunches (there's something I never thought I'd ever say!).  And I do love smashed avocado with a poached egg on sourdough for breakfast, and that's better for me than cereal of any kind. 

There's no excuse for not having salads really, we have plenty of veg suitable for salads in the garden now.  I guess it's down to laziness and convenience - so easy to just have cheese or beans on toast, or a sandwich.  

One simple lunch we have had a couple of times in the past couple of weeks, and it's delicious.  Fresh picked courgettes (we're growing 3 different kinds, yellow, plain green and striped green), sliced and gently fried in olive oil with plenty of black pepper, served on toasted sourdough with a sprinkle of grated mature Cheddar.

Need to go shopping tomorrow, the fridge is looking bare, so I'll do a freezer inventory and meal plan today.

Tonight we're having fish pie - a previously made and frozen one, it's topped with sweet potato mash.  We'll have it with homegrown French beans and courgettes.

Lidl bargain cheddar

TA, I'm glad your quiche turned out to be excellent....as for cheese, we can never have too much cheese in/on something ;-)

My fan oven also has hot spots!  Ridiculous, isn't it.  

Eloise, keeping food shop money in a separate purse is such a good idea, isn't it - I shall try to always do it from now on.  

For those who have a Lidl nearby - you may know that every weekend they have a couple of items on very good special offers.  Some offers are brilliant, others aren't things that I would normally buy so of course I don't get them then - it's only a bargain if it's something I would use anyway.  This weekend they have a fabulous offer - extra mature Cheddar in 830g blocks, on offer at £2.39.  That works out at £2.88 a kilo! (it said so on their website, I'm not a maths wizard lol).  We had a few things to get in town this morning, so popped into Lidl and got 4 blocks of cheese....so under a tenner for nearly 3 1/2 kilos of extra mature Cheddar, fantastic saving.  I shall grate it all and put it in plastic tubs in the freezer.

For TA - crustless quiche

For my lovely TA - I make a crustless quiche quite often, although the ones I make are quite a bit bigger than what you're planning to do....we generally have half of it warm (not hot!) on the day I cook it, with the other half at room temperature for lunch the next day.  I usually use about 6 eggs and cook it at 160-170 (mine is also a fan oven) for around 30-40 mins.  The actual time depends on the other filling ingredients and the depth of the dish I'm using...eg, raw meat like chicken or sausage, or raw vegetables, I would cook for longer.  Pre-cooked filling ingredients or a shallow dish would require only about 25-30 mins.

For your quiche, I would suggest 160 deg for 20 mins.....or until the surface is lightly golden brown and looks/feels firm.

To be honest, I rarely go by times for most types of oven baking....I just do things until they're done - checking by eye and feel.  If I can smell the food from another room, that's generally a good indication of doneness too.

Hope this helps, dear lady! xx 

Cheese & tomato salad, smoked cod

It's been over a month since I last posted here, too much going on means all too often healthy eating goes out the window, replaced by comfort eating.  And then I have gut issues and aching joints and realise I must get back to making us proper healthy meals.  With all that's going on in our lives right now, food is pretty much the only thing I have control over.

Finances are tight, as always since last year, so I've decided to have a low spend August, I've taken a sum out of the bank for food shopping and put it in a separate purse, and that will be all I can spend for August.  It's not a vast amount, but will be doable because we have a well-stocked freezer and larder, and plenty of veg and fruit in the garden.  Shame we don't have a cow, pig, couple of sheep and some chickens, along with a river full of salmon, but we can't have everything!  I do have 2 or 3 packs of beef mince, quite a lot of pork and chicken, a bag of salmon fillets and some smoked salmon, about 6 packs of bacon and couple of packs of sausages in the freezer, along with lots of tins of tuna, salmon and mackerel, so meat and fish isn't a problem anyway.

For lunch today we're having mozzarella, feta, tomato and cucumber salad, it's all marinating in a balsamic and olive oil dressing.  The cucumber is homegrown, the tomatoes aren't, ours aren't ready yet.  We'll have homegrown radishes with it, we're growing French Breakfast which are lovely, hot and peppery (wonder why they're called that, I wouldn't particularly want them for breakfast).   Husband will have a slice of his homemade seeded bread, I'm staying off bread for a few days.

Dinner will be smoked cod in a fresh white wine and cream sauce I bought reduced to 15p and froze the other day.  Yesterday I did a big tray of roasted summer vegetables to have with roast pork belly slices, there's half the veg left to go with the cod, along with some freshly podded peas....bought sadly, ours have come to nothing.

A small joint of beef

I'm so glad I did all that pre-cooking and freezing stuff, it's saved me having to have the oven on quite a few times when it's been too warm.

Husband's appetite is very hit and miss right now whilst he's not well - eg. Saturday he came along to neighbour's bbq, ate half a sausage and then went home again.  Sunday morning he did say he fancied roast beef for dinner, so we nipped out to the supermarket and got a small joint.  Having cooked it, with Yorkshires and a tray of Mediterranean roast veggies, he only ate half of what I dished up for him, which was a smaller portion than he'd normally have anyway.  Betty ate the rest of his beef, to her obvious delight.  

Yesterday he'd got his appetite back a bit, we had cold beef with the leftover veggies (roasted Med veggies are equally as nice cold) and mayo with grainy mustard stirred through it.  Again though, it was a smaller portion than he's used to having.

Today I minced up the remaining beef and stir fried it with peppers, onion, asparagus, mushrooms, edamame beans and a small amount of brown rice, with a slosh of Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.  It was delicious and he ate all of it.

We've been having homemade seeded bread for toast in the mornings, and a few sarnies for lunches - comfort food (it's been a stressful few days) and easy to prepare.  I'm paying for it now though, feeling very bloated and uncomfortable.  So will be laying off the bread and doing very low carb for a week or so.  

I've done a couple of larder stocking up shops and with all the ready prepped meals and veggies in the freezer, along with plenty of milk, cheese and eggs, and fruit from the garden, I shouldn't need to do any more shopping for a couple of weeks.  

Easy meal prep done

Over the past 2 days, with very little effort on my part, I've cooked loads of things for future easy meals.  I was up stupidly early again this morning, so put the oven on and got on with more roasting and cooking.  Husband was up about an hour after me and made a wholegrain loaf.

I've roasted 6 chicken legs, 8 chicken thighs, a huge pizza, 12 high meat content sausages (not all this morning, some were yesterday).  Cooked a large panful of wholewheat pasta and one of brown rice yesterday.  Made a panful of pasta sauce consisting of tinned chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, courgettes and Italian seasoning this morning.  Put a large pork shoulder joint in the slow cooker, to be shredded when it's done (the rind got cut off and roasted this morning whilst the oven was on, then cut into small crackling cubes).  All to be portioned up and frozen.

Hard boiled 8 eggs (they last for a week in the fridge).  Made a bowlful of bulgur wheat with herbs, spices and lemon zest and put in fridge.  Chopped a load of carrots, cucumber and peppers and put them in lidded plastic boxes in the fridge, to go with Greek yogurt-based dips.  All I have to do now is chop up and roast a large trayful of Mediterranean veg to freeze.

Enough food for a couple of weeks' worth of lunches and dinners, and it was ridiculously easy, mostly just bunging things in the oven or in a pan on the stove.  Why didn't I think of it before?!

A weekend of cooking to provide future easy meals

We've had a lot going on in our lives recently, as well as my chronic tiredness, and one of the things I've been finding hard is cooking a meal from scratch every day.  Sometimes, even trying to think of what to have for lunch or dinner, if I haven't made a meal plan, is just so difficult when my brain is so foggy I can barely remember my own name.  We've very nearly run out of homecooked and frozen ready meals, so I need to get on and do some more.  

I've decided to do things slightly differently, just to make things even easier for myself for a while.  

The first thing I've done is an online shop, so we don't have to physically go and do it this week or next.  I've ordered a pork shoulder joint, for pulled pork in the slow cooker, a large pack of chicken thighs, couple of packs of high meat content sausages - all of these I'm going to cook over the weekend and then freeze them in portions.  I shall also roast a large tray of Mediterranean veg, make a load of tomato based pasta sauce and cook a panful each of wholewheat pasta and brown rice, all to be portioned up and frozen.  So that way I know that if (well, more likely to be when) I get up in the morning feeling like I really can't cook anything that day, or we're going to be out on hospital appointments, which can take several hours, I can just take some ready cooked meat, sauce, veg and carb out of the freezer ready to throw together later in the day.  

I'll hard boil some eggs and put in the fridge, we have plenty of tinned tuna and salmon and I've ordered ham, salad, coleslaw etc, so we'll have lots of options for lunches.  Breakfasts are easy, either toasted German rye bread, eggs cooked whichever way, or Greek yogurt and our own homegrown fruit - we have plenty of strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants now.  So that should make life a bit easier, but still eating healthily.