Most of the meals we have cooked and eaten for the last few years have catered to his tastes (pizzas, roast dinners, rich casseroles and hearty cooked breakfasts) instead of mine which would [...]]]> My tremendous man likes his food but has us both worried about the minimal number of vegetables or fruit he eats voluntarily.

Most of the meals we have cooked and eaten for the last few years have catered to his tastes (pizzas, roast dinners, rich casseroles and hearty cooked breakfasts) instead of mine which would lean towards including many salads, soups, fish dishes and many meat-free meals.

Because of this reliance of meaty dishes (partly) we have both gained unwanted weight and would like to eat less heavy meals and introduce more vegetarian items to our main evening meals. On thumbing through the vegetarian cookbooks it transpired that there was very little which sounded nice to B. I suggested to him that maybe we/he need to stop thinking in terms of what would TASTE like a good treat to eat but what would be a good treat for our insides to eat.

As well of the health risks associated with eating a long-term diet rich in meat and saturated fats (heart disease and bowel disease mainly I think) we also would like aim to be able to buy a higher quality of meat, locally reared less often than the mass-produced supermarket supplied cuts more frequently. Local, organic meat is without a doubt an expensive commodity but by only eating meat once a week for our main meal we hope to be able to buy a fine bird or joint for our Sunday roast dinner.

Last week I managed to compile and cook a full week’s worth of vegetarian dinners all of which were well received by B and I’m happy to share them with you here:

• Roasted vegetables (red onion, red peppers, courgettes, aubergine, mushrooms) ith grilled haloumi cheese, houmous and raw spinach leaves
• (grated) Courgette and red onion cheese quiche with wholemeal shortcrust pastry and homemade coleslaw
• Vegatable lasagne (with majority of veg being chopped into pretty small pieces but the mushrooms left chunky as an almost-meat substitute)
• Jacket potato with tuna mayonnaise (added finely chopped spring onion, red pepper, celery and sweetcorn kernals)
• Vegetarian grills (Quorn I think) bought from a shop made to be like pretend breaded chicken escalopes served with potato wedges
• Bean stew – the same as our sausage casserole only without the sausages

And when I’m home alone the following options are invariably cooked and eaten as both are my favourites but sadly abhored by Mr B:

• Chick pea dahl (surprisingly delicious tinned option from Morrisons) augmented with spinach, served with boiled rice, natural yoghurt and mango chutney
• Any one of a number of scrumptious risottos (pea, mushroom, courgette, plain old onion) all made with homemade frozen chicken stock (I recognise that this disqualifies it from being classified as vegetarian), white wine and lashings of parmeasan cheese.

My good friend Deborah has a very busy time as has a high powered job as a [...]]]> I had a busy week last week as took all three littles to stay with very special friends in London who made us very welcome despite the inevitable noise and chaos we bring with us wherever we go.

My good friend Deborah has a very busy time as has a high powered job as a civil servant but also manages to dedicate lots of time to her three little daughters (two year old twins and a five year old), she and her husband rather miraculously manage to keep their lovely home looking nice and tidy too!

When quizzed about the secrets of juggling so many important ‘balls’ at once without dropping any of them she told me that as well as having lots of lovely regular help from the girls grandparents (both sets of grandparents make a weekly visit, sometimes more), a cleaner, and some bathtime help from the teenage girls living next door, they also have a strict routine of planning ahead each Sunday night which involves creating a menu plan for the children, placing the online grocery order makes a lot of stress, looking at the calendar to see what things are happening and how that might impact clothes/packed lunches etc.

I was super impressed with the menu plan which was pinned up on the wall for all to see. They started having a plan when their baby twins came along and the house was full of people helping. Each night whoever was helping would ask their elder daughter what would she like for dinner and she would always say ‘pasta’ as it is her favourite food. After a couple of weeks the parents realised that she had eaten nothing but pasta for as long as they could remember and so now a plan helps them to keep their children informed as to what they’ll be eating that lunchtime or evening and any other adult pitching in with getting food on the table before little tummies start growling can look to see what is on the menu.

Next to the weekly kids menu plan was the shopping list which made sense as they are able to add to the list in preparation for the week ahead and also as they run out of things.

Sample kids menu (*with grateful thanks to Deborah and John)

Mon lunch: Chicken goujons, peas and chips
Mon supper: Noodles and sweetcorn

Tues lunch: Soft boiled eggs, bread and butter and tomatoes or carrot sticks
Tues supper: Fish fingers, chips and brocolli

Wed lunch: Bagels and ham or smoked salmon and cream cheese
Wed supper: Pasta bolognaise with cheese

Thurs lunch: Lamb casserole
Thurs supper: Beefburgers, bun tomatoes and cucumber

Fri lunch: Chicken and sweet potato
Fri supper: Jacket potato, beans and cheese

Sat lunch: Roast chicken, brocolli and carrots and potatoes
Sat supper: Pasta with cheese

Sun lunch: Sausages and mash with sweetcorn
Sun supper: Sandwiches

I’m finding that just having a master list of things my two kids like to eat stuck to the fridge is a help but personally find a rigid menu plan too constraining for us as sometimes our plans change so I’ll just make a quick cheese on toast (or ‘pizza toast’ if its got a layer of ketchup, then bits of ham underneath the bubbling cheese) with some carrot sticks or even give them a nice bowl of comforting ready break or weetabix if they’re especially tired and hungry. But a master list enables me to think’ah yes we all love lasagne and I’ve got some minced beef AND I have the time/inclination to make one today while the kids are playing with their friends’. As many people, I try to make favourite sauces, casseroles etc in bulk and freeze a couple of extra portions. I also always double the amount of pasta or rice so that I can put some in the fridge for another extra easy meal the next day (heat up, add some grated cheese or tuna et voila).

The oher thing I remind myself fairly regularly is that kids don’t actually need or want a huge variety of meals. As long as they are getting plenty of the right amounts of the major food groups in milk, cheese, fruit or vegetables, bread, potatoes, rice or cereals and not too much sugar then they are likely to grow up enjoying food and healthy too.

My list of things my kids eat:

Beef lasagne
Tuna pasta bake
Shepherds pie
Eggy bread
Tomato soup
Cheese on toast
Homemade burgers (with secret veg)
Fishcakes
Spaghetti bolognaise
Sandwiches
Noodles
Sweetcorn
Sausages and mashed potato
Scrambled egg
Fish fingers
Lamb chops

PS: I found this lovely looking menu planner/shopping list pad for sale at Organised Mum last night – it sticks to the fridge and has a pencil too. Being of a thrifty nature I make do with a cheapo lined shopping list blu-tacked to the fridge with a pencil stuck on another blob of blu-tack but this might find itself on my Christmas wishlist…

My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to [...]]]>

My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to write AND its so hot!) but I’ve got a tiny moment to share the fantastic book I’ve borrowed from the library.

Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Our Year of Seasonal Eating’ is an insiprational and educational account of the author and her family’s decision to leave Arizona where the population generally doesn’t know that potatoes grow in the ground and are 100% dependent on the petroleum industry to bring them food to their supermarkets all year round to a farm in Virginia where they spend a year only eating what’s in season and grown locally (their own gardens and those of small local farmers). The kids and the husband all write essays, facts and recipes which are inserted into the main narrative. Its a fantastic read.

It has made me determined to eat less food which has traveled a long way. Food which is grown to be transported thousands of miles is generally bred to travel well and not to taste good, and for each 10 calories provided by a vegetable or animal when eaten many more calories are spent producing it (fertiliser chemicals, insecticides) and transporting it. Each time I put the book down I’m even more fired up to continue our quest to live a simpler life in which food is not just grabbed as a pre-prepared product at the supermarket and wolfed down but instead lovingly planned, grown, shopped for, perpared and enjoyed with no hidden preservatives, flavourings, transfatty oils, or meat from poorly treated animals hiding within.

I’ve learnt so much and am only a third of the way through the book (eg. why hybrid seeds are a bad thing – because they don’t produce viable seeds for next time; making cheese at home is easy and fun with normal pasteurised milk; how supporting local farmers and buying their produce at a farmers market can have a huge impact on the local economy and environment) but the main thing I’m going to try to do more of from now on is resist the temptation to buy food out of season (because it will have been shipped halfway around the world to meet my desire for it) and to buy food produced in the UK, locally if possible from small enterprises rather than the huge food suppliers.

When one decides to be more of a locovore (someone who eats only locally and ethically produced food) one needs to be prepared to be inventive and creative with making dinners with only what is seasonably available (but not hard if you start being a ‘locovore’ in the middle of bountiful summer!) storing some of the glut of fresh foods harvested during July-October helps.

It was only a generation ago that out of season vegetables (shipped by train in ice-boxes from California to colder states) where a rich person’s party-piece, now they have become the norm and so unfortunately have all the questionable processes which bring these flavourless, travel-hardy cousins to our table.

The book is on loan to me from my local library but I’ve just bought myself a copy (a rare thing these days for me to actually buy a book instead of just borrowing it until I’ve read) as I know I will want to use the recipes time and again, lend it to like-minded friends and to re-read for more ideas of what to grow in our garden.

There is an accompanying website written by the family where the recipes can be found.
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

I was a bit shocked to see that we had overspent by £175 on our Housekeeping account but it is not yet the end of the month. My initial reaction was to be cross with myself for not keeping on top of the spending, for not sticking to the budget and for [...]]]>

I was a bit shocked to see that we had overspent by £175 on our Housekeeping account but it is not yet the end of the month. My initial reaction was to be cross with myself for not keeping on top of the spending, for not sticking to the budget and for not doing things like menu planning. I also assumed that the overspend was due in part to the fact we have had lots of friends and family come to stay recently and on these occasions we tend to cook some special meals and have more beer and wine than we do when are at home alone and had eaten out several times.

I chatted to Bealers about our overspend expecting him to be annoyed but in fact he wasn’t and instead he mentioned the fact that a friend of ours had written about rising food costs

When I read her blog post & comments from others where recent increases in food prices had been noticed by individuals but downplayed by the media I realised that our overspend was not a one off as I scanned our grocery receipts and looked for where the obvious luxuries had increased the food bill but couldn’t actually find any.

If food and other household essentials are to take a bigger part of our monthly income we decided to take the following action steps to ensure that we are still able to live within our means and not nibble away at our savings.

1. Be stricter with our weekly food shop and prepare meal plans in advance
2. Cook simple, low cost meals (shepherd’s pie, vegetable pasta sauces, risotto, omlettes, soups) instead of fancy meals with exotic ingredients (Thai vegetable green curry, pizzas with pepperoni & mozerella)
3. Use online grocery shopping as less tempted by ‘off list’ things and can also tally up the total before getting to the checkout
4. Eat less meat (especially as we buy organic meat which is more expensive than tasteless factory farmed meat) and buy fewer gluten-free cakey treats
5. Buy zero pre-prepared food. Hard as we buy very little but do usually have veggie sausages etc in the freezer
6. Use the food in the freezer, cupboards at the end of the month instead of buying more food (eg. use the bread machine to use the packets of bread flour instead of buying loaves costing £1.10)
7. Have an emptier fridge so we can see at a glance what it contains rather than having things going off at the back
8. Buy fewer convenience foods for the children (don’t buy many anyway but had got into the habit of buying small juice cartons for lunch boxes but the kids take a bottle of water to school anyway)
9. Buy in bulk for things we use a lot of where possible (eg. potatoes, carrots, beer, meat) at the beginning of the month having worked out approximatly how much we’ll need and try to use no more (just like people used to do in days gone by according to Mrs Beeton’s book of household management)
10. Plant and grow plenty of vegetables we use a lot of or ones that can be used for lots of different recipes (eg. tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, parsnips)
11. Explore the ‘Value’ range at the supermarket – already buy Value butter and this week discovered that the kids don’t care about the Value bourbons in the biscuit tin or the Value fromage frais in the packed lunches.

On top of all these likes/dislikes we’re trying to be healthier and [...]]]> I love vegetables, Bealers isn’t so keen, he loves pasta & bread but I can’t eat gluten, I could eat rice every day and never get sick of it, he can’t abide the stuff, I rate fish and shellfish highly but Bealers doesn’t!

On top of all these likes/dislikes we’re trying to be healthier and more thrifty with our food budget so what meals does that leave on the list of things we both like and won’t blow the budget (and are easy to make!). Luckily we are both meat eaters so are at least compatible on that.

• Pork & cider casserole with mash/rice/baked potatoes
• Hungarian beef goulash with rice
• Chilli with corn tortillas, grated cheese, avocado, salsa and greek yoghurt
• Curry of all kinds (rice for her, naan bread for him)
• Roast dinners
• Omlettes of all kinds
• Fish, chips & mushy peas
• Spicy beanburgers and salad
• Wheat free lasagne
• Thai red curry with veg and tofu
• Jacket potatoes with homemade coleslaw & cheese or houmous & salad
• Lamb/pork chops with new potatoes salad/veg
• Fried breakfasts (bacon, eggs, tomatoes, baked beans and mushrooms)

Not a huge list there. A lovely new years resolution designed by Bealers was to use our plentiful supply of recipe books and try to cook something new from one of them every week of the year so we discover new dishes which we both enjoy. So far he has stuck to his plan and last week we had a very tasty supper from the latest Jamie Oliver book ‘At Home’ with chicken thighs, new potatoes and tomatoes all roasted together in a big oven proof tray.
When Bealers is away or out for the evening I always treat myself to one of my personal favourites:

• Rataouille with rice or a jacket potato or just on its own with grated cheese
• Chick pea and spinach curry
• Risotto either plain, ‘green’ (peas, courgettes, brocolli) with loads of white wine and parmeasan
• Fisherman’s pie
• Bacon, spinach & avocado salad
• Fresh soup