Went shopping...Its not what you think!

Confession: Last Thursday I went shopping at ASDA.
My wonderful neighbour that I have been telling you guys about mentioned that she was going to go to ASDA that day and I really wanted to go.  I had made a simple list of things I wanted to buy.  I still hadn't bought any olive oil or flour and I just wanted to get these two things, oh and a swiffer to mop up the floors.

But as always, when you go to the store you end up buying more than you anticipated.  Although in my defence I bought more non-perishable items than perishable.
I bought loads of flour and some sauces.  I also bought yeast for breads and baking sheets.  I bought some spices and olive oil, things that are pantry essentials to food go from good to great! Oh and I had to buy some cleaning supplies.

I didn't buy that many things as my total bill came to 20 quid.  These things should last longer than necessary so I don't know if I would count it as shopping for found for the month.

So that makes my monthly total up to about 70 quid.  A little less but lets round up.
This week is vegetarian week and so far I've made rice and beans and tomato, basil baked pasta. Tomorrow I'm making a vegetarian pot pie.

Hope you guys can all forgive me.  Technically I am still cooking off of the 43 quid that I spent at Aldi on Oct 1st.

I still have half the month to go and I know for sure I can make it.  What do you guys think? Does this count as my monthly cost for food?  I'm really hoping that I can cook food for the two of us for 40-60 quid a month.  Lately we've been having some people visit so it's always costly to host dinner parties but so far it works.
I still have two frozen chickens in the freezer along with some ground beef and turkey.
Will post pictures of this weeks vegetarin adventures.

Crackling pork courtesy of Jamie Oliver

So on Wednesday night I made "crackling pork roast"  By Jamie Oliver.  Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/6-hour-slow-roasted-pork-shoulder/

It wasn't hard but it took time.  I had to adjust the time since I only wanted to cook a 1 kg pork shoulder and his recipe calls for 2 kg.

The fun part of making this was seeing the skin puff up off the pork.  It took about 4 hours to make and came out really well.
My neighbor also came over to use my oven so it ended up not as crispy as I wanted it to be.  Her oven had broken and she wanted to roast a chicken and some potatoes.  It was fun to see how hard my oven was working with a pork roast, chicken roast and two types of potatoes inside.  The chicken ended up taking 4 hours to make as well because of the distribution of heat.  We even turned up the temperature to make up for the crowded space.  It's amazing how much food we ended up with after everything was done.  The chicken, pork, vegetables and potatoes came out well although nothing came out extremely crispy.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures but you get the idea.  The pork has lasted until Saturday.  We have a friend staying with us who is a vegetarian so you'll be seeing more vegetarian dishes in the next few days which is a good thing since I have so many bags of frozen vegetables that I need to use.

Buying too much mince meat. Day 6/30

When I went to Aldi I bought 1 kg of ground beef and 500 grams of ground turkey.

As I was thinking about what to make I realised that I probably bought to much ground beef and not enough actual meat chunks.  So my plan is to making spaghetti and meatballs, a meatloaf dish and chili with ground turkey.

On Monday I made spaghetti and meatballs.  As you know Sunday we had a bbq so there wasn't really any reason for me to cook that day but I did sneak home three bbq chickens and saved those for lunch on Monday.

Anyways back to the meatballs; I didn't have the usual suspects on hand.  With meatballs people usually want to make it with eggs, italian herb seasoning, breadcrumbs, cheese and ricotta or something creamy like that.  I didn't have any of that except eggs so I improvised.
I use 400 grams of ground beef and 250 grams of ground turkey.  I left out pieces of bread the night before to let it go stale and through that into the mix.  I didn't have any cheese so I used a mixture of creme fraiche and sour cream.  I put in some different seasonings, salt, pepper, garlic, and diced onions.  I mixed that all together and started forming meatballs.
While I waited for the meat to rest a little I put together the sauce.  I used 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of whole tomatoes, 1/2 cup water, hearty spaghetti seasoning from wild tree, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and 2 tablespoons of tomato paste.  I let that simmer for 30 minutes and threw six raw meatballs and the rest of the meatballs I cooked in the oven at 160 C.
Then I cooked some spaghetti and called it a day.
It was pretty good, moist and flavorful.  My husband really enjoyed it and for the next two days he had meatballs for lunches and dinner.  For lunches to go I didn't cook spaghetti and steamed some vegetables and poured the meatballs over it.
I made that on Monday and today (Wednesday Oct 8) I made crackling pork shoulder.
I'll share that with you tomorrow!  It was good but I have no frame of reference.

Stretching that dollar, quid, krone, whatever currency

Yesterday I calculated the cost of making the roast chicken and how much it cost for us to have dinner last night.  

Last night I made a Japanese curry with the leftover roast chicken I made on Thursday.

The roast chicken, with potatoes and boiled vegetables cost a total of 1.50 quid per serving, but the we didn't eat the whole chicken.  I used the same chicken that cost 2.99 quid to make the Japanese chicken curry.

The curry consisted of :

1/4 Chinese curry paste

1 zucchini

7 salad potatoes

6 mini portobello mushrooms

1 tomatoes

2 carrots

1/2 onions

1/2 block of tofu (cooked in soy sauce)

leftover chicken.

I made a huge pot of it on Friday for dinner and we had it again for dinner tonight Saturday. Jonas will also have it for lunch on Monday at school.  It made a total of 6 servings.  Each serving only cost .70 pence. 

For lunch we've had ham sandwiches with chips (crisps)  Very simple lunches and breakfast also consists of bran cereal, eggs, oatmeal, fruit and wholegrain toast.  Very simple and clean.

Aside from the crisps, everything we've eaten has been clean and cheap.  The curry was chock full of veggies, I only used half of the left over chicken and will use that to make a some chicken lettuce wraps for Jonas on Monday's lunch, including the rest of the curry.   I also didn't add any salt to the curry.  You could really taste the vegetables through the subtle curry notes.  I didn't take a picture of the curry but I will take pictures of the chicken lettuce wraps.  I'm really excited about that. 

Here is a picture of our breakfast spread breakfast. Looks good right??

I still have two frozen chickens, frozen vegetables, fresh vegetables, ground beef, ground turkey and pork shoulder loin with lots of potatoes and onions.  Only have 26 days to go!  I know I can make one grocery trip last the whole month.  

I"ll be making meat loaf, meat balls and chili with the ground beef/turkey.  Still thinking about what to do with the pork shoulder. 

With the left over chicken bones I plan to make my own chicken stock.  

Wherever you live in the world, stretch that money note in your hand!

Live well, give generously!

Love -

PS tomorrow we have church and a bbq.  Yay free food! I still have to make dinner.  Ha. maybe bbq leftovers. 

Million Dollar chicken- Day 2 of 30.

Today is the second day of my challenge of not stepping foot inside a grocery and I failed.  I actually did step foot inside a Tesco today but that was to compare prices from Aldi. A huge difference.  I did end up buying a few items at the asian food store though.  These are just things that I can't seem to find anywhere else.  I bought sesame seed oil and good black vinegar.  If you are asian you'll know what I mean.  Sometimes you just need to have it and I'll be cooking a good share of asian food and its hard to make those things taste like home when I don't have the right ingredients.

Anyway today I made "Million Dollar Chicken" by Chef John from Food wishes.  Have you heard of food wishes, I love this blog and if you get a chance you should check it out.  Here is a link: http://foodwishes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/million-dollar-chicken-of-course-it.html

I made simple cottage fries and some boiled vegetables.  My husband really likes gravy and sauce so I made some gravy as well, though we didn't even touch it.

The cottage fries came out okay.  I bought some coarse sea salt today because I had no salt since moving in last week and thought I should probably buy some.  This was my first time buying coarse sea salt as opposed to regular granulated sea salt.  Because I didn't know really how much to use, I ended up using a little bit too much and the cottage fries came out a bit salty.  My husband really likes salt so for him it was perfect, but for me it was too salty.  The big pieces tasted fine but the small pieces were just over the top.  Here are some pictures.

The hand in the picture is of my husband reaching to eat a piece.

The chicken on the other hand was really good, although I did have a small problem again with the coarse salt. I'm pretty sure without even googling it that I just don't need that much.  Just something I have to get use to.  The salt didn't make the chicken too salty but it did make some of the bread pieces a bit salty.
The chicken tasted just right, skin was crispy and the meat was moist.  It wasn't hard to make and regarding the crème fraiche I didn't have shallots so I used regular white onion and didn't have the apellepo pepper so I just ground black pepper.  It seemed to work fine and tasted great so I imagine if I had used the right ingredients it would have tasted even better but I guess we will never know. (for now) 
The chicken was a hit and my husband had a hard time not eating the whole thing but I reminded him that this chicken needed to last us at least 3 more days so he ate some more vegetables instead.  The chicken was paired with the cottage fries, boiled veggies and gravy. 
Here are some pictures of the results.  The final product of the chicken didn't look that great but trust me it tasted really good.  

 

You should give it a try.  I'm planning on making a chicken stock with the bones and for tomorrow lunch tomorrow I'll make a sandwich and for dinner I'll make a big pot of chicken curry that will be good for the next day as well.  From there I'll see what leftovers we have and make something for Sunday.  I'll update you on how many days we got out of the chicken on Saturday.  Until then, eat well and give generously.  :)

Going shopping yesterday

As you all know I went shopping for groceries that should last us the entire month. I ended up going yesterday October 1st instead of today October 2nd because I thought it would probably be better to go the first day of the month.

I ended up getting a lot of stuff and stayed pretty close to my budget.

Here is a picture of the receipt.

  The 5 quid off voucher really helped out. Although on the receipt it looks like I used 5 quid and then paid another 43 quid but the 5 quid was the voucher.  They pretty much treated it like cash.
My budget was 40 quid and I paid a total of 43.01 quid, not too bad.  There were some items I probably didn't need to buy but bought them anyway.  For example I bought three pints of greek yogurt.  I am crazy about greek yogurt and it was the first place that I've seen that actually carries it in large quantities and for a fair price.  Aldi is definitely way cheaper than all the other stores but I have yet to decide on the quality, so far it seems to be about the same but I've only made one meal so far. Check out Aldi's website here. : https://www.aldi.co.uk

I bought a good amount of meats but in retrospect I probably bought too many types of ground meat and not enough cuts.  I ended up getting ground beef and turkey to make different type of meatballs and burgers.  I bought a big cut of pork shoulder and three 1.25kg chickens.
I then bought a good amount of fruit and veggies.  I bought a lot of potatoes, probably more than I can eat in a month, a lot of mushrooms, tomatoes and a big bag of onions (my husband loves onions) and a pack of garlic.  I also bought a basil plant.  I think I"ll also buy rosemary and thyme next month but for now basil will have to do.  I also bought lots of dried and canned goods such as pasta, rice, beans etc.   Vegetable wise I ended up buying more frozen vegetables because I figured the veggies would go bad quickly in the fridge.  I did buy zucchini, broccoli, carrots and cabbage but I'll cook those soon and keep them in the fridge.  I bought a huge thing of Bran Cereal (gotta get my fiber) and loads of bread.  Here are a few pictures of my haul.

It was a pretty big haul and I'm really thankful for my neighbor who gave me a lift.  She was super nice about everything.  All in all I'm pretty happy with the amount of food I was able to buy for a reasonable cost.   Here's hoping I can make it a whole month without stepping into a grocery store.

Making leftovers new again

On Monday I made a poor version of eggplant lasagna.  The eggplant was still a bit raw and it just tasted funny.  My mouth itched, does raw eggplant do that to you?  Anyway, we eat most of what we could and saved the rest for left overs.
Today I was looking in the fridge and noticed that I had: two tablespoons of cottage cheese, left over eggplant lasagna, some pie dough, baby potatoes, three small portobello mushrooms and frozen spinach, frozen carrots and of course the usual suspects, onion and garlic.

I went online and searched for a website that would allow me to punch in all those items and give me a quick list of recipes.  I found one called Recipe Matcher. (recipematcher.com) I put in all the items I had on hand and it gave me a complete list of recipes I could make.  They were all useless because they all required me to go out and buy something new.  The whole idea was to make something right now and not have to buy anything.

So I put down the computer and just got to work.
I cut the baby potatoes in half and added it to a boiling pot of water.
While that was going, I minced garlic and onions and tossed them into a hot pan.  I also diced up the mushrooms and threw them on top of the garlic and onions.  I let them cook down for a while.
I took out the left over lasagna and pulled out the raw pieces of eggplant, chopped them up and threw them into the pan as well.

Once that looks like it was cooked through, I grabbed a bit of frozen spinach and frozen baby carrots and threw them in as well.

While I waited for the spinach and carrots to defrost, I drained the baby potatoes that were not soft and ready to be mashed.  I added butter, some seasonings, nutritional yeast, and cottage cheese run off.  Mashed it together with a fork and called it done.  I then took the left over eggplant lasagna which was now just ground beef, sauce (red and white) zucchini, broccoli, and mushroom and placed it in a loaf tin.  On top of that I put the mash potatoes and let it sit while I got everything else ready.

The spinach was melted by now but I wanted to wait for the water to cook out.  While I waited, I took the dough out of the fridge and started rolling pieces out to flatten into discs.
Once the water had cooked out, I added the cottage cheese and turned of the stove to cool.

I continued to flatten dough out like mini pizzas and set them aside.  Once the mixture was cool enough I took a tablespoon of the mixture and put it in the middle of the dough, the closed it up.  I put the dough filled balls seam side down onto a greased pan and kept going until I ran out of dough.  I was able to fit 14 dough balls in the pan before I ran out of dough.  With the leftover mixture I spooned it on top of the mash potatoes and placed everything in the oven. (carrot poking out of the middle one)

I had pre-heated the oven to 150 C and left it to bake for 30 minutes.  The results came out well and I didn't even get a chance to photograph it.  My husband ate seven of the dough balls and half of the "cottage pie."  He loved it and I have to say, it was pretty darn tasty.

And had no added salt at all with very little oil. Some butter for the mash and to grease the pan but thats for looks anyway.  I was pretty happy with it.  Next time you have leftover, try making something new and fun!  Its all going to the same place anyway, your stomach.