Month long menus and sewing machine graveyards.

(pictures to be added: poorly camera!)
I STILL need to finish my quilt. I have done the quilting, and as long as you don't look at the back, it is ok for a first ever job. Besides, Stella is too young to quibble. But now I need to bind it, and the thought of yet more hand sewing is making me wince. It got smaller and smaller as I tried to straighten it, so it is at least one month quicker to bind than it would have been had I had a straighter eye.

I MUST get a machine going. I have inherited 3. One handcrank Jones, one Singer and one New Home. None of them work, apart from the handcrank, as very little goes wrong with that mechanism, but it is totally seized up and needs oiling. I know I should just give up on them and get ebay them, put the money towards a new machine, but they are just such nice old things, I like them regardless of the space they take up and the frustration they cause me. I have promised one more fiddle with each of them, then they go to ebay or freecycle, where maybe someone will love and use them.

So I have tweaked and tweaked to get my weekly shop consistantly at around 40-45 quid. This time, I have gone for the full monthly. I've only mentioned dinners, but the shop includes sandwiches for lunch 3 times a week, and freezer lunches from the previous weeks dinners 4 times a week, plus cereal and fruit for breakfast.All veg comes from the allottment blokes and is of a negligible cost, as are eggs from the bloke opposite. All meat comes from the butchers van that visits, cheap cuts are ordered the previous week. God, I sound so 50's.It remains to be seen if knowing your dinner for a whole month will be as boring as it sounds. (All recipes are generally heavier on the veg and less on meat. So if a recipe calls for 500g meat, I use 250 and keep the rest in the freezer. DH eats a lot of meat but the kids only a little and me likewise. Not using too much meat keeps costs down)
Week 1:
Mon: chicken and leek pie (using leftover chicken)
Tues: Macaroni cheese with hidden veg and pork chops
Weds: Gasman's stew from Jamie Oliver. Want to slap him, like to eat his food. Whilst slapping him.
Thurs:Paella
Fri: Fish cakes and veg
Sat:Moussaka
Sun: slow cooked lamb stew from Nigel Slater (using cheap lamb neck)
Week 2:
Mon: spicy pork and noodles
Tues: Sausage and veg casserole
Weds: Tomato bean and bacon stew
Thurs:Chicken and butter bean casserole (from the fragrantly annoying Tana Ramsay)
Fri: Chilli
Sat:Cornish Pasties (from the superb Hairy Bikers, not annoying, just ordinary and tasty)
Sun:Steak and Kidney pie (from my nan)
Week 3:
Mon: Goulash
Tues: Cannelloni with spinach and Ricotta
Weds: Lamb burgers and salad
Thurs:Pork, apple and juniper casserole
Fri: spicy chicken and fruity cous cous (basic marinated chicken baked with couscous)
Sat: Fish pie (whatever 500g x 2 is cheap in the fish van)
Sun: Lamb stew with pearl barley (The Nigel Slater again, everyone loves it so much it's on twice)
Week 4:
Mon: Whore's pasta
Tues:Jacket spuds, radish and orange salad and coronation chicken
Weds:Sausages and puy lentils with baked field mushrooms
Thurs: Lamb chops and baked aubergine and tomato layer
Fri: chicken kebabs and salad with rosemary focacia
Sat: homemade pizzas, spinach, egg, tomato, chorizo and olive using Jamie Olivers recipe for the dough.
Sun: Baked marmalade gammon with baked potatoes and salad. Gammon is fantastically cheap and not just for Xmas.

Here is the recipe for Coronation Chicken, a terribly 70's dish, but one that is a guilty pleasure. The kids like it, and I do too. Serves 4 and makes 4 sandwiches the next day.
25g butter
1/2 finely chopped onion
3 tbsp curry paste
2tbsp tomato puree
100ml red wine
1/2 lemon juice
4 tbsp apricot jam
300ml mayonnaise
150g greek full fat yoghurt
6 cooked chicken breasts (I steam them)
Cook the onion in the butter, then add the tomato puree, curry paste, lemon juice and wine. Simmer and reduce the sauce (for about 5-10 mins). Add the mayonnaise, yoghurt and jam, mix up and blend if you want it smooth, if not keep it lumpy like I do. Slice the chicken into pieces, stir in the sauce, and eat with a big salad and jacket spud. Some people like sultanas in it, but that is just to make an odd recipe even odder. Yum. In a 70's way.

meal planning, not life planning

In a bid to further hack away at our monthly expenditure, I have spent the last few months avidly borrowing recipe books from the local library and trying things out on the kids and spouse. I have been learning the art of MEAL PLANNING (for which, this book has been enormously useful). Yes, at the start of every month I look at the accounts, I look at the cupboards and the freezer, and sit down armed with recipe books to plan those meals. My method is to cook BIG 3 times a week, this leaving me with 3 portions to freeze and use as lunches or teas for me and the kids the following week or week after. The Sunday (or Saturday) roast or "big dish" provides the ingrediants for one or two dinners that week. This is a method that the fabulous Marguerite Patten (right) advocates in her book "How to cook", which despite its' age is a grat guide to eating in season and with thrift, although I have not attempted any of the older offal recipes involving brains and tripe, I have memories of my great grandmother trying to persuade me of tripe boiled in milks delicacy which have quite put me off.

There are no sweets, no extras, and all the veg comes from the old bloke down the road who has a huge veg growing back garden. Lately, in the "hungry gap", this has meant a lot of potato, leek, turnip and Urrgh swede. I have started using nowt but bicarb and essential oils to clean, and this has also helped cut costs without affecting the cleanliness of the house at all. In fact, i Think it's cleaner, and it smells less chemical. Once daughter is potty trained, I can shave more pennies off.

This weeks shop came to £45.00, which was pretty good, I thought. Here is the menu. Playgroup days I make a packed lunch of sandwiches, hummus, veg sticks and cake. This weeks cake is one-stop-apple-cake, i'll pop the recipe on at some point.

Mon: (playgroup day lunch), Leftover fish pie and veg for tea

Tues: Cheese and ham puff pastry bakes with salad for lunch, Pork fried rice and veg for tea, spiced up extra for spouse and I.

Weds: (playgroup lunch), spaghetti, spinach and squash bake (from the annoying Tana Ramsey, but a good recipe despite the godawful photos of her prancing with an apron on that make me want to slap her)

Thurs: Minestrone soup for lunch (last weeks leftovers), venison sausages, mash and caramelized onion gravy with greens for tea. Friday: (playgroup lunch) and Chicken Maryland for tea, this Jamie Oliver recipe. (left)

Saturday: Spanish Omelettes for lunch and homemade Cornish Pasties and veg for tea.

Sunday: Roast Chicken, roast veg and Eton Mess for Sunday Lunch and beans on cheesy toast for tea! (my fave, really.)I will get a chicken and leek pie out of the chicken, plus soup stock and spousal sandwiches for lunch.

All this tightness will save me money. Except that it won't, as having saved some, I will spend it on this lovely Janome, thus breaking my vow not to buy new stuff this year. But sewing machines are exempt, in a clause I just made up. So, food is organised, life is not. Childrens' illnesses continue unabated, with one wheezing and one sneezing. I need to fence the garden, sort out raised beds (i'm freecycling for building materials), plant seeds, clean all the garden toys, patch the paddling pool, and become a Lib-Dem councillor to stop them building 1,000 houses on the field at the end of my garden, but that's another blog.