Friday: fish pie - I love fish pie, but felt this one was a bit bland - dill or mustard would have helped... or lemon zest in the sauce? Or just tons of parsley? Frugal note: frozen fish pie mix (same components at Tesco) is cheaper than the fresh variety - and may, conversely, be fresher. There was enough left to freeze for another day*
Saturday: what did we eat on Saturday? I raided the fridge for left overs* - 4 herb sausages, a lot of double cream on the turn... sausages converted to meat balls, fried up with onions and garlic, all the squishy tomatoes* added and cooked until soft - then add a little tomato puree, a little passata and a couple of spoons of cream - eat with pasta - spaghetti* 29p a packet in this case. It was too creamy, a little bland - horror. I should have added lots of basil at the end or put some dried oregano in at the beginning, or nutmeg - or anything really! M&I don't eat puddings - so we aren't having any at present as Finn is trying not to either.
Sunday: we went to the local Cliftonville "farmers" market. I bought a nice cabbage* - some local "Gruff" goat cheese - some local honey mustard, a pack of rabbit joints (£3.80 v. reasonable), and two pork and stilton pies for our lunch. I also acquired a bag of beef bones £1* and some brawn.
In the evening I made a really nice lamb and apricot stew with some neck fillet that I'd got half-price*... and fried with onion, chopped carrots garlic, coriander, ginger - I added some water I'd been blanching apples in (* because free additional flavour), and a ladle from the (chicken) stockpot *- salt and pepper - after half an hour I added some soaked apricots, and ten minutes later some blanched slivered almonds and some chopped coriander leaves (leftover from last week's feast*). We ate this with plain couscous. It was utterly delicious, but could have done with a little more liquid. I will try and do it with some cheaper bits of meat - but doubt whether it would be as nice.
We had Irish apple bread (well, I didn't) afterwards. This was made with our own apple*, which have been fantastic this year - and a few slivered almonds. I made it in the Remoska* - a worktop electric oven/cooker - as an experiment - which seemed to work quite well. The Remoska uses virtually no energy compared with putting on a gas oven for 40 minutes. So even more frugal points there.
So in the last 3 days I have accrued 11 "frugal points" - this is a nice game to play... think I'll do a separate post about it.
Saturday: what did we eat on Saturday? I raided the fridge for left overs* - 4 herb sausages, a lot of double cream on the turn... sausages converted to meat balls, fried up with onions and garlic, all the squishy tomatoes* added and cooked until soft - then add a little tomato puree, a little passata and a couple of spoons of cream - eat with pasta - spaghetti* 29p a packet in this case. It was too creamy, a little bland - horror. I should have added lots of basil at the end or put some dried oregano in at the beginning, or nutmeg - or anything really! M&I don't eat puddings - so we aren't having any at present as Finn is trying not to either.
Sunday: we went to the local Cliftonville "farmers" market. I bought a nice cabbage* - some local "Gruff" goat cheese - some local honey mustard, a pack of rabbit joints (£3.80 v. reasonable), and two pork and stilton pies for our lunch. I also acquired a bag of beef bones £1* and some brawn.
In the evening I made a really nice lamb and apricot stew with some neck fillet that I'd got half-price*... and fried with onion, chopped carrots garlic, coriander, ginger - I added some water I'd been blanching apples in (* because free additional flavour), and a ladle from the (chicken) stockpot *- salt and pepper - after half an hour I added some soaked apricots, and ten minutes later some blanched slivered almonds and some chopped coriander leaves (leftover from last week's feast*). We ate this with plain couscous. It was utterly delicious, but could have done with a little more liquid. I will try and do it with some cheaper bits of meat - but doubt whether it would be as nice.
We had Irish apple bread (well, I didn't) afterwards. This was made with our own apple*, which have been fantastic this year - and a few slivered almonds. I made it in the Remoska* - a worktop electric oven/cooker - as an experiment - which seemed to work quite well. The Remoska uses virtually no energy compared with putting on a gas oven for 40 minutes. So even more frugal points there.
So in the last 3 days I have accrued 11 "frugal points" - this is a nice game to play... think I'll do a separate post about it.
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