Beans?

As I mentioned in my previous post, we're being inundated with some of our veggies.....French beans in particular.  They're growing almost faster than we can pick them, and because some of them get hidden by the masses of leaves (husband planted them quite close together), some are huge and thick by the time we spot them.  Well, they're not very nice to eat by that time, the pods get stringy and tough.  So I'm wondering whether I can pod them and just cook and eat the beans.  I don't see why not, after all, all kinds of beans in tins started off in pods!  I'll give it a go in the next few days.**

We didn't think we'd get much of a good harvest of anything this year, it was such a disastrous start to the growing year as it was so wet, windy and cold in Spring.  Lots of our first sowings of veg seeds failed, even some of the second sowings, and quite a few seedlings we bought to try and catch up died off too.  But pretty much everything has not only caught up, but done extremely well.  Oh, except for the strawberries and blueberries, we didn't get as many of either of those this year, although the blackcurrants and raspberries have done well.  We're going to pick most of our apples (eating apple Fiesta, cooking apple Bountiful) this weekend, even if not quite ready - they're being decimated by wasps and I don't want to lose all of them.

Husband wanted southern fried chicken and chips tonight, I've been trying to avoid too many carbs this week for gut reasons so it will be interesting to see if the chicken coating and the chips have any adverse effects on me.  I'll just have a few chips (I will eat the chicken coating, it's the best bit!) and will make coleslaw to have with it.  We had a very thin base pizza last night, spinach and ricotta with sun dried tomatoes, I had about a third of the medium size pizza and left the crusts, to reduce the carbs, we had it with lots of salad.  No gut trouble, thankfully.

**EDIT  I've googled and found that yes you can eat the podded beans, but they should be boiled rapidly first (rather like dried kidney beans), as when older and bigger they contain a chemical that could give you stomach upset.  A recommendation was that you just pod and freeze the beans raw, then boil them for 10 mins from frozen, then cook a bit longer until soft.

Almost too much garden produce to deal with

We have garden produce coming thick and fast now, needing harvesting every day - loads and loads of French beans, both green and purple (why do they turn green when cooked?), 3 types of courgettes, carrots, salad leaves, cucumbers, baby corn.  There are still 4 bags of new potatoes left to dig up, and masses of tomatoes but they're still green.  Late summer/autumn raspberries, and the eating and cooking apples are ready too, the pears will soon be ripe.  Our butternut squashes have done incredibly well this year.....not quite ripe yet, but there are masses of them, enough to last through the winter, and some of them are absolutely huge, one will easily do us for 4 meals I should think.  It's great having all this produce, and saves us a lot of money, but it's a lot of work at this time of year....every day I'm having to process all this stuff, and there are times when I groan when husband comes in from the garden with yet another trugful.  I shouldn't moan really, I'd be a bit annoyed if we didn't have it all.

I've found that slicing and lightly frying the courgettes in olive oil, then spreading them out on parchment lined baking trays before boxing up is the best way to freeze them.  Carrots I chop up in my processor, I don't bother blanching them before freezing in plastic boxes, they're fine to defrost and use as they are in stews or mince.  The French beans I do blanch first, one year I tried not blanching them before freezing but they didn't taste very good when defrosted and cooked.

This is the first year we've grown baby corn....funnily enough Sue in Suffolk mentioned them this morning, a first time for her too, she said hers are ready and in fact possibly a bit too big.  Thanks Sue, I told husband to have a look at ours and he confirmed they're ready, he brought a load in so we'll be having them in a pork stir fry tomorrow.

We're having salads for lunch most days, I grate raw courgette and carrot to have as well, we had tuna with a sprinkle of grated Cheddar today.  For dinner we've just had Asian pork burgers (a bargain 50p for the two, reduced late in the afternoon when I went shopping the other day), with our own new potatoes and French beans and coleslaw made with our own carrots and chives with a bought cabbage.  Husband followed his with a slice of Somerset apple cake made with our own apples - I'm cutting down on carbs so resisted the temptation.

Rice salad, date & walnut cake, Panzanella

Yesterday I made a nice rice salad to take out with us for a picnic.  I used one of those microwaveable packets that most of the supermarkets do now, I like them because they're measured portions and now come in so many different combinations and flavours.  The one I used yesterday was wholegrain basmati rice with quinoa, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, really nice.  I grilled 2 back bacon rashers until crisp, then snipped them into the rice.  I chopped some tomatoes (sadly shop bought, our own aren't ready yet), homegrown cucumber and radishes and added all those, along with some sweetcorn.  Made a quick balsamic and oil dressing and mixed in.  Packed into 2 lidded bowls in our little lunch coolbag, with 2 slices of homemade date & walnut cake and a flask of coffee, it was a lovely lunch eaten at our favourite beach.

The cake was a simple quick one - I just basically made a Victoria sandwich mix, using half white/half wholemeal flour and an extra tablespoon of flour, to give the mix a bit more strength to hold the dates and nuts so they wouldn't sink to the bottom.  I used Demerara sugar and less of it than is usual for a sponge mix.  I always use about a third less sugar than is called for - you really can't notice the difference in taste, and husband has certainly never mentioned it.  

Today's lunch salad is going to be Panzanella, as I found some ends of sourdough bread in the freezer which need using up.  Again it won't be our own homegrown tomatoes, but I managed to get some nice British vine tomatoes reduced to half price yesterday.  There's a red pepper going soft in the fridge to be used up too, and I'll thickly slice one of our homegrown ridge cucumbers.  I'll make a balsamic and oil dressing and whisk in a spoonful of green pesto.  Think I've got some salami in the freezer, so will get that out to have with it.

Salmon fillets with our own new potatoes and salad for dinner.

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.