Something's Cookin'

For someone who moans quite a lot about how much food costs I rarely write anything about what I actually do with it once I've forked out all my money. Inspired by Karen's great blog I thought I'd give you an insight into what we'll be eating during the next few weeks chez Keshling.
I have been tidying my kitchen cupboards over the last couple days, partly because I have something of a stockpile of food and cleaning stuff (10 boxes of 52 Finish Powerball Dishwasher Tablets, special offer at Lidl - £3.75 instead of £7.50. Should last a year. 10 packs of 300g Extra Mature Cheddar from Lidl - £1.64 each. 24 packs of Strawberry Supreme Dessert at 10p each. 4kg of popping corn at 99p a kilo. And so on.) and partly because my cupboards are a frightful, disgraceful mess. However, hoorah!!! Some are tidy now and I will post 'before and after' pics just as soon as I take some, and before they get filled to the top with crap again. I haven't allotted specific days to my menu plan - I just cook whatever I remember to take out of the freezer the night before, which is usually what the cook feels like eating. And two of the meals have been eaten already. The puddings are made from things I came across whilst turning the cupboards out.

Cheese and Onion Flan with Chips and Beans

Spicy Mince and Carrots with Feta Crumble

Fish Pie with Peas

*Minced Beef Cobbler

Roast Pork with all the trimmings

Cheese, Ham and Potato Omelettes with Beans

Mole Chicken with Savoury Rice

*Prawn Curry, Pilau Rice, Onion Bhajis and Naan Bread

Meatloaf, Spuds, Vegetables

Chili and Rice with Cornbread

Cheese and Potato Pie with Beans

Crab Chowder with Cornbread

Jambalaya with Prawns and Chorizo

Sernik (Polish Cheesecake)

Flapjacks

Lemon Meringue Pie

Mango Fool

Irish Cream Cake

Pancakes with Maple Syrup

Cream Cheese Frosted Carrot Cake

Bakewell Pudding and Custard

Blackberry Crumble and Custard

Fudgie Wudgies

Gingerbread and Banana Trifle

Mincemeat Tart with Meringue Topping

As much Strawberry Supreme Dessert as you can eat lol!

We already ate the Minced Beef Cobbler; the Spicy Mince thing is a recipe from the Daily Mail - we've had half last week and still have half frozen; and the Prawn Curry was really quick, easy and pretty economical. It was just half a bag of Lidl prawns with four big potatoes cut into cubes and parboiled (thanks for the idea Saphy!), a jar of Lidl Jalfrezi Sauce and a tin of Asda Chickpea Dhal thrown in. The rice was microwaved in 90 seconds and I was surprised to see it was marked best before 2007...ooops! Tasted fine though (famous last words!!!). The onion bhajis were yellow stickered from Sainsbury's, 74p from £3; and the naan breads were found in the bottom of the freezer and won't have been full price either. There's still about a third of the curry left so I've frozen it. My Mr Charming is coming home from Uni for a few days on the 11th so I'll make the Fudgie Wudgies (his favourite Brownies) and the Crumble for when he's here.

You can see that almost everything is made from scratch - I often really don't feel like setting to and cooking when I get home from work at 4pm, yet it's so nice to have home-cooked food. I feel very sorry for people who can't cook, or won't try to cook. They don't ever get the satisfaction of putting a meal in front of their family and thinking 'I made that!'. I know it's not a very feminist attitude but it gives me a lot of pleasure to produce something delicious from a few ingredients. I think some women wear as a badge of honour the fact that they don't cook or 'just don't have the time to cook!' As if they're so busy with their important and glamorous lives whilst the rest of us bovines skivvy away at our inconsequential little pin-money (if only!) jobs. I remember when Red was baptised we threw a party afterwards and I'd worn myself out, gone totally over-the-top with the food. French patisserie, a fantastic (I won't deny it, it was) cake in the shape of a cradle, quiches, croquembouche, dips...I'd gone crazy. And the wife of Big Man's sea daddy turned to me and said 'I don't know how you do it, I wouldn't have the time'. Because everybody knows, being a childless legal secretary whose husband is mainly at sea is SOOOOOO much harder than cooking up a 'party-food-for-fifty' storm and coping with a tiny new baby when your family are 250 miles away. That woman never knew how close she came to a smack in the chops that day, and I could have easily blamed my hormones.

So there you have it, the kind of things we eat. The best part is that I either found the ingredients in the back of the cupboards and realised that I could make whole meals from them, or I bought the makings last month, when I overspent on my £250 food budget by about £140 (eeek!!!). I haven't so far bought any food specifically to make meals with. And yes, I DO realise it's only the 4th but I'm pretty sure we can go to maybe the 20th without buying anything other than milk and probably bread. I have a breadmaker but I'm the only one who likes homemade bread....yep, the others here are just weirdos, I know. I'll keep you posted about how we go on.

Just for SP, Spinach and Ricotta Bake

908g frozen spinach, defrosted
340g ricotta cheese

4 medium eggs, beaten
freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper
cannelloni tubes
2x400g cans chopped tomatoes
handful of fresh basil leaves, finely chopped

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Grease a lasagne dish. Squeeze any excess water out of the spinach then put in a bowl with the ricotta and garlic and mix together. Stir in the eggs and nutmeg and season.
Using a piping bag squeeze the filling into the cannelloni tubes one by one. Place them in one layer into the dish. Mix together the tomatoes and basil. Season. Pour the tomatoes over the cannelloni and bake for 25-30 minutes. Serve with a green salad or whatever turns you on.

This is an old Slimming World recipe that we've had and really liked stacks of times. What I sometimes do is buy fresh lasagne sheets, cut them into three, put the filling in and roll up like cannelloni - they cook much faster. You can also substitute a carton of passata with basil plus 1T of sugar for the tins of tomatoes. Bon appetit SP!!

Sloppy Joes

This is a really tasty recipe that I like to make when I've got some beef mince and bread cakes. Tonight I also made some homemade cheesy nachos.

Ingredients:

750g beef mince

1 onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped (I use red peppers from a jar, from 99p Stores)

170g tin of tomato puree (get a tin, not a tube, it's cheaper)

250ml water

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1T chili powder

1t each of paprika, cumin, dried oregano and distilled white vinegar

3T brown sugar

1/2t each salt and ground black pepper

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat saute the beef for 5 minutes. Add the onion and red pepper; saute for 5 more minutes or until onion is tender. Drain the fat.

Mix in tomato puree and water, stirring until the puree is dissolved. Stir in garlic, chili powder, paprika, cumin, vinegar, brown sugar, oregano, salt and pepper. Continue to heat for 5 to 10 minutes, or until mixture is thick and stewy.

Split open bread cakes (bread buns, cobs, whatever you call 'em in your neck of the woods) and pile the Sloppy Joe mixture inside. We just have one each and this amount feeds four. Yum yum yum!!!

I also made some cheesy nachos to go with it. Put one pack of Morrisons Value Tortilla Chips onto a baking tray; tip half a jar of salsa over the chips; grate some Cheddar on top. Put into the oven - I have a fan oven that cooks and grills at the same time but really you can just grill them until the cheese is getting all nice and melty. Don't leave them in too long because the chips can burn really quickly.

Most delicious!!!!

Adieu My Young Bucko....Howdy Ranchero Pie

Mr Charming went back to uni today which means that it's just me and Big Man Monday to Friday with Carb Addict at the weekends. It wasn't a very willing departure - Mr Charming hasn't been very well and would rather have stayed at home than return to the wilds of Cornwall. He's only just finished his first term and if he already doesn't want to go back it's a bit worrying. Still, he'll be fine when he gets there...that was my mum's answer whenever me or my sister were unwell and wanting a day off school. 'You'll be fine when you get there'. Once you'd made it to school what choice did you have? There was none of this being sent home ill when I was a lass!
This is one of Mr Charming's favourite dinners...I made it for him last night.

RANCHERO PIE

500g minced pork

tin of beans

tin of chilli beans in chilli sauce (or a second tin of beans and some chilli powder)

hot sauce to taste

salt and pepper

1 onion, chopped

splash of oil

about 6 medium sized potatoes

grated Cheddar from a piece about 75g

Start by peeling your spuds and boiling in salty water. Whilst they are boiling away gently fry the onion in the oil until it is just see through and softened. Add the minced pork and fry that off until the pinkness has gone. Chop at it as you're frying or it'll stay in big lumps and you don't want that. Then add the tin of beans and the tin of chilli beans (or second tin of beans and chilli powder). Season and add a bit of hot sauce. This is usually by the Tabasco sauce in supermarkets but you can get different types at ethnic stores.

When the potatoes are done drain and then mash them. Add the grated Cheddar to the mashed potato and mix thoroughly. Put the mince into an ovenproof dish and spread the mash on top. Then pop it into your oven until the topping is brown. I've got a fan oven and I use 180C with the grill on at the same time. I'm not sure what the Gas Mark would be or electric oven - sorry!

You can add sweetcorn to the mince if you want but I don't bother. It's delicious without it.

Bon Appetit!!