Meal Planning Monday No. 1 – 26th September 2011

I’ve seen the weekly Meal Planning Monday blog posts popping up regularly in my GReader for a few weeks now and I’ve been inspired by Kate at The Five Fs and Emma at Mummy Musings to start taking part myself.

I’ve been getting really frustrated with a few things to do with our evening meals lately. Firstly, when we have no plan we will occasionally end up eating an unplanned takeaway which is not only unhealthy and no good for my weight loss plans, it’s also very expensive when compared to a home cooked meal. Secondly, we might end up deciding on a meal during the day which requires a ‘quick trip’ to the supermarket for some essential ingredients that should cost about £5, yet I always seem to manage to spend about £30. Again, no good for a weekly budget and also can sometimes mean we end up eating quite late, another hindrance to healthy eating & my metabolism.

So, from this week onwards I am going to start planning out our meals for the week and, this is the really important bit, sticking to it! I might switch days around if our circumstances with work etc change but, ultimately, these will be the meals we’re going to eat this week:

Monday: Sweet chilli & garlic chicken stir-fry with rice noodles, baby corn & sugar snaps

Tuesday: Probably soup as my husband is out until late at a meeting

Wednesday: Slow-cooker gammon joint with green salad, new potatoes & coleslaw

Thursday: Slow-cooker braised beef in red wine with carrots, parsnips, mashed potato & broccoli

Friday: Lemon & rosemary oven-baked seabass fillets with roasted vegetables

Saturday: Chinese marinated pork shoulder steaks with rice & vegetables

Sunday: Slow roasted spice rubbed boneless shoulder of lamb with roasted butternut squash, cauliflower & green beans.

Why not pop over to Mrs M and see what everyone else is planning this week?

Thanks for reading,

ladyofessex

x

Banana & Chocolate Chip Muffins

When I was baking the Mini Quiches I realised that I had some bananas hanging around that had seen better days.  I only really like eating bananas raw when they are still quite green and under ripe (I know they’re harder to digest that way, don’t nag!) so it was either throw them away or use them up in some devastatingly imaginative way.  I hate wasting food, so, with a quick root around the cupboards and a bit of Googling, the decision was taken to bake some banana muffins.

This is the recipe I used:

From Allrecipes.co.uk but I halved the quantities and chucked a few dark choc chips in because I felt like it!

Ingredients – Makes 6

100g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder (I didn’t have any bicarbonate of soda so I increased this and it seemed to work)

Pinch salt

2 small bananas, mashed

75g caster sugar

1 small egg (you might need an extra spoon of flour if the mixture feels too ‘wet’)

35g butter, melted

50g dark chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius / Gas Mark 4.  Place 6 paper cases in a muffin tin.  I only had boring white ones but I think dark brown ones would look gorgeous 😉

2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt; put to one side.

3. Mash the bananas and, if you’re like me, try not to hurl at the sight/smell of overly ripe sweetness as these WILL be yummy, I promise.  Combine this gooey mess with your sugar (which I also like to sift), egg and melted butter.  Fold in the flour mixture (I also sift this again) and mix together to get a smooth batter.  It should look something like this:

Doesn't look that appetising, does it?

4. Eat a few of the chocolate chips.  Eat a few more.  Top them back up to the required 50g and sprinkle over the muffin batter, like this:

Ah, that's better! Dark chocolate chips make everything better.

5. Stir the chocolate chips in and spoon the mixture evenly between the paper cases.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until they are golden brown on the top and spring back when lightly tapped.

7. Cool on a wire rack then eat, remembering to save some for the next day’s packed lunches!

OmnomnomnomNOM

Ham & Cheese Mini ‘Bread’ Quiches

After realising that Little Man would be taking a packed lunch to preschool every day from now on, I started to think about how I could keep them interesting and varied for him.  At the moment, I think it would be a good idea to stick to traditional ‘picnic’ type items that don’t require cutlery as I’m not sure on the preschool’s policy on this.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled seeing a recipe for mini quiches that used bread as the crust instead of the usual shortcrust pastry which I thought would be not only quicker but also easier to do and get Little Man involved at the same time.

A quick search on Google and I came up with a few variations, so I decided to wing it and create my own.  Here’s how I did it:

In the absence of my pastry cutters, I had to improvise!

Firstly, I had to cut out the bread discs.  I think white bread would probably work best for these in the same way that it generally toasts better, but in an attempt to keep them fairly healthy I used 50/50 bread which seemed to work fine.  You could always try wholemeal bread which should work, it just might not be as ‘strong’.  My pastry cutters were last seen at my Mum’s house but she’s convinced she doesn’t have them, so who knows where they are?  I had to improvise so I used the biggest mug I could find which just happened to be a Starbucks one!  Ooh, I really fancy a Starbucks now – skinny peppermint mocha to go please!

6 bread 'discs' ready to be buttered

I’d decided to just make six mini quiches as I’m currently trying to follow a wheat-free diet so they would only be eaten by Little Man and Big Man and I wasn’t sure how long they would keep for.

Buttered and ready for the quiche filling

I buttered the non-stick muffin pan that I was using and also buttered the bread discs to give a ‘seal’ so the egg filling wouldn’t seep into the bread and make it soggy.  I think the next time I make them I would roll the slices of bread out slightly to make them thinner and also use something bigger to cut the discs out with so that they come up slightly deeper with room for more egg filling – this would give a better filling to crust ratio!

My Commis giving the eggs a good mixing!

Then, while the bread ‘crusts’ were baking and colouring (about 10-15 mins on Gas 6, approx 190 degrees celsius) it was time to make the filling.  I used 2 medium sized eggs with about 100ml of milk and into this I added some turkey ham, shredded, about 50g of grated mature cheddar and about a tablespoon each of flat leaf parsley and chives.  Obviously, you could change the fillings to suit.  Next time, I’ll probably try bacon, mushroom and use a bit more cheese as that flavour didn’t really come through enough.

Lots of lovely herbs for extra flavour

There was a bit too much filling as the bread crusts weren’t really deep enough and my over-enthusiastic helper didn’t stop pouring at the right time so some of the egg mixture overflowed the crusts and went around them in the muffin pan.  I was worried that this would cause major problems but it really didn’t in the end.  I suppose that you could possibly make ‘crustless’ quiches in this way, maybe by putting the egg mixture into a paper case, then I could have them too!  I baked them for about 15-20 minutes on the same setting but as my oven is old and decrepit I wouldn’t take my timings as gospel on this!  Basically, you want them set and golden brown on the top.

Straight out of the oven

On getting these out of the oven I managed to burn myself yet again so I’m really hoping my Bio-oil experiment works!

Voila! Finished & cooling.

Little Man took one to preschool in his lunch the following day and he ate it so I’m guessing he liked it!  Big Man also tried one and declared them tasty so it looks like I’ll be making them again soon!  Let me know if you decide to give them a go or if you have any other suggestions for different packed lunch options for Little Man.

Thanks for reading!

ladyofessex
xxx

Silent Sunday – 14.08.11