Tag Archives: menu planning

Plans, Poetry and Popes

Two days ago, I had plans. Roast veg and gammon for tea (ensuring we had extra roasted veg for soup), a pre-prepared vegetable stew for Tuesday night, soup for tonight and Paste bake for Thursday. The beauty of winter weather is that our fridge always works better. It can chug a bit in summer and things don’t last as long. It was a brilliant idea at the time, and still seems impressive in hindsight. It would, of course, be more impressive if I’d actually done anything about it. The kitchen just seemed a bit nippy and the living room, with the fire, TV and company, seemed so much more attractive. That’s why, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had sausages for tea.

I’m a great planner, but I haven’t quite mastered the other bit, the part where I actually do things.

I have also failed in my plan to write three passable tanka a day (I wrote two yesterday and fell asleep in front of the TV), my plan to write my February presentation for the Numismatic Society and . . .

Sadly it’s a long list and the year is only three days old. The motivational book I just read seems to have changed nothing. With it being on Kindle, I can’t even burn it to keep warm. On the other hand, I can’t really blame the book for my lack of application.

Pope Benedict XVI – the other side of the Newman medal

It’s a coincidence that I’ve used a medal showing the late Pope, but also timely. I wanted a decent medallion picture, as I had mentioned medallions in the post. and this was the first suitable one I found. I try to avoid religion and politics as subjects, but if something like this crops up I’m happy to go along with it.

(Sorry about the erratic timing of the posts – this was planned as a second part for yesterday, but time ran away with me so I altered a few things and made it the post for Wednesday, though there may be another.

Chilly . . .

The flower in the picture was waiting for Julia when she arrived at the garden yesterday.  Today followed much the same pattern as yesterday, though we did put the cover on the car windscreen so there was less to clear.

It was -4 when e set off this morning and -2 when I emerged from work. This is probably regarded as shirt sleeve weather in Canada, but we find it quite chilly. The houses opposite the shop still had frost on the roof so I expect it had been that temperature for much of the day. I’m getting too old for this. Old bones need more warmth.

I’ve done some proper menu planning for the first time in ages. It’s not so much that we need to plan the food, but it can be a bit cold in the kitchen (to the extent of food thawing faster in the fridge than if we leave it on the work surface) due to our budgetary restraints. The menu planning is not so much about maximising nutrition as minimising time spent in the kitchen.  If I can organise things to cook two or three meals at a time the kitchen is warm enough. If I just want to chop a few veg and bake one thing it can be an inhospitable place.

 

One day we will look back on this time and realise that we would have been better spending the money and keeping warm. To be honest, we’d have been better moving house thirty years ago while we were both working. We could have bought one that wasn’t draughty, and which didn’t front up to the north wind quite so much. Being on a ridge, we get a good view and flooding isn’t a problem. However, it can be a bit breezy.

That’s enough for now. I need to sit by the fireside talking to Julia and sipping tea, but mainly, eating cake. We have quite a lot of cake to eat (lemon and blueberry) because it was reduced and it called out to her as she passed the shelf  . . .

Too Many Carrots

I’m currently cooking with one half of my brain and blogging with the other. Or, to clarify, in case this conjures up pictures of more activity than is actually happening, I’m waiting for a timer to go off, wondering about what else to cook and thinking about recipes. At the same time, having missed a post last night, I’m typing a post while I have a few minutes and feel warm enough to do it. We are still economising on heating, which means I don’t get to the keyboard as much as I would like, as I’m still determined not to take the laptop into the living room.

We have not been doing as much menu planning as we should, and I’m faced with a problem of what to make with carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes and onions. We’ve already had vegetable stew and vegetable soup in the last few days. Julia did something Chinese with chilli, rice and prawns on Monday but I’m struggling to be inventive. We would have had fish pie but we are trying to clear the freezer for Christmas and all the fish is currently frozen as we aren’t very good at forward planning and anything takes days to defrost at the moment. I could, I suppose, bake pieces of fish in foil. They will defrost like that, but I’m not sure that they go with root vegetables. In the hands of a Masterchef contestant, with a carrot puree here and a parsnip foam there, and probably a sweet potato pickle and a fondant potato, I’m sure my list of ingredients would be wonderful. In mine, not quite so much . . .

We could have the good old standby of pasta with stuff in it and pesto poured on – we have prawns and mussels in the freezer and they take no time to defrost – but it doesn’t seem much of a meal in winter.

Julia just rang as I was juggling pans. She’s on her way back from a meeting and wanted to know if she should go to the chip shop on the way past.

So, tonight’s menu is fish and chips with peas. Tomorrow we will be having mixed vegetable hash with corned beef (it could be eaten tonight, but I’d rather have chips) and I’m currently using the vegetable water from parboiling the hash vegetables to make a carrot, lentil and garlic soup. It was going to be carrot and lentil, but the garlic paste jar looked about empty so I used it all, and the resulting smell from the pan is rather garlicky.

In fact the chips just arrived so I’ll eat now and finish this later.

The Back of the Cupboard

It is five days since I last went shopping, and we are planning a new expedition. I’m not looking forwards to it – I don’t really want to queue around the outside of the shop as they allow us to enter one at a time for a tour of the empty shelves. We have tried ordering home delivery, but can’t find a delivery slot – they are all booked up for weeks to come.

I won’t carry on with this complaint as I’ve said it all before, but I am confused as to why the shelves are still empty despite the restrictions on buying.

I feel a bit guilty about buying more food while we still have plenty, but it’s a question of quality rather than quantity. We have food, in the sense of having things to eat, but in terms of having a proper balanced diet we are nearly out of a number of staples.

To manage our food more efficiently I have been checking the backs of the cupboards. I didn’t find Narnia but I did find some mango chutney to go with my previous discoveries. I even found a tin of rice pudding whilst I was shuffling packets and counting tins.

We have, I think, enough food for three weeks, if I really push it. Unfortunately, this is only one week of balanced meals, as we are running out of fresh vegetables. It won’t include bread, as we are about to run out. Nor, soon, will it include milk, eggs, or salad. Our vegetable stew will be served without dumplings due to a lack of flour.

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Happier Days…

Week Two will see us running out of fresh fruit and relying on tinned vegetables – beans, mushy peas and sweetcorn. Sadly, the fish fingers and tinned mushy peas will be served without potatoes, which are in short supply. The cheese will have gone by the end of the week. On a brighter note, we will have plenty of marmalade, though without toast to put it on this is a mixed blessing. If we have any surplus cheese biscuits I will try them with marmalade.

Week Three will see some real culinary horrors as the tinned haggis comes into play, teamed up with chick peas and lentils. I bought two tins of haggis when I was worried about Brexit but haven’t been able to face actually eating them.

Julia told me that there is a spoof email doing the rounds, and taking advantage of the fear of food shortages. It promises tins of pork, but people are advised not to open it as it’s just spam.

Sorry about that – when Julia told me I couldn’t stop laughing. We have a tin of spam on the shelf next to the haggis. We will have to see if I’m still laughing when we are reduced to eating it.

Haggis and root vegetables

Haggis and root vegetables

 

 

 

Outline of a Day

Got up.

Panicked.

Took Julia to work early.

Discussed setting Julia’s watch to the correct time.

Went home.

I then searched for the washing machine change, packed the washing and went to do the washing. I expect, due to a touch of dramatic foreshadowing there, that you had guessed that.

Planned next week’s menu.

Read.

Gave a lady change. I don’t normally do this, as I believe you should organise your own life, not expect me to do it, but she asked nicely.

Went round the duck pond. Reflected in a pensive and poetic manner.

Shopped.

Put four bags of old clothes in collection bin. Julia appears to have been hoarding clothes since around the turn of the century.

Went home.

Had curry for lunch (left over from earlier in the week).

Fell asleep.

Picked Julia up.

Fell asleep in front of TV.

Woke up.

Ordered pizza.

Only just posted before midnight!

The best laid plans…

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Reflections on Knitwear, Quinoa and Ice Hockey

It’s been a mixed day, but at least I’m back on the blog and feeling enthusiastic. I even took some video of clothes going round in the washing machine. It’s not very exciting – the excitement came later when I emptied the machine containing six of Julia’s jumpers. It turned out that the spin cycle wasn’t up to much on that machine and I ended up with seven wet jumpers (my contribution being a modest single item), a pool of water on the floor and, it later turned out, a drier that wasn’t up to the job.

I won’t bore you with the video. Partly out of consideration for my valued readers, but mainly because I can’t get it to download properly.

The damp jumpers are currently draped over a variety of convenient items in the bathroom.

I think we need to have a talk about knitwear. Why one small woman needs her own bodyweight in knitted garments I really don’t know.

I’m going to start going to the laundry later – it can be quite hectic at 8am as we all try to get in before the rush, but at 10am it was empty again and quite relaxing. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to rush, despite all the talk of eating frogs.

You can take pictures when nobody is there.

After writing a menu for the week, which is going to be healthier and better structured than I’ve been managing recently, I then went shopping.  It was a special day today, with everything set up to make it difficult for a man having a bad joint day.

One of the doors is still jammed, people seemed to be targeting me like something in a chariot race and then the trolley wouldn’t release the £1 coin. I’m seriously thinking of writing a letter so TESCO can ignore me.

I also noted some unusual items in the bins they use for collecting for the Food Bank. Quinoa and Couscous?

Don’t get me wrong – people using food banks deserve good food, but I’m a little sceptical that there are many eaters of Quinoa and Couscous amongst the typical users of food banks. Some collection points specify the types of goods they want, and I’ve never seen either of these on the list. They aren’t generally on my list either, but this week I happened to buy both as I’m going to be eating healthier lunches.

By the time I finished shopping the light had gone so I went home to prepare red cabbage and put the gammon joint in the oven.

Finally, on looking at some internet pages relating to the Winter Olympics, I ended up looking at our medallists for the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix in 1924. We aren’t particularly good at winter sports and it took us from then until Sochi in 2014 to win four medals again – a gold, a silver and two bronzes. We’re currently on four again, a gold and three bronzes, so people are getting excited. My experience of British sport indicates we’re heading for disappointment yet again, but you never know, I may be wrong. Perhaps our famously unlucky speed skater might stay upright until the end of a race. Or perhaps not…

If she does, we will have to make a film of it. Disqualified three times at Sochi, crashed twice at Pyeongchang and has one last chance to fulfil her destiny. It would be brilliant if she did.

It would make a better story than the British Ice Hockey team at Chamonix. At least eight of the ten were Canadian, Wiki is silent on the place of birth of the remaining two, though I suspect they were probably Canadian too. Several of them had interesting careers, particularly Blaine Sexton. It’s an interesting link, particularly the picture of him in the uniform of the Windsor Swastikas, in the days when they were one of three teams using the name, and Swastikas were merely seen as interesting good luck charms.

I’ve always thought of  people swapping between nations as a symptom of the moral bankruptcy of modern sport. Looks like I was wrong.