This week I have been mostly eating...

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. 

Carbo-charged frugality

It is true that if one wants to eat cheaply one has to make the most of lots of carbohydrate foods.  Sadly even these are getting more expensive.  Basic supermarket pasta is about double the price it was 3-4 years ago, and bags of flour are about 3 times more expensive.  All the beans and pulses have risen in price - as has rice, but I think rice hasn't risen as much as the others.  I have invested in large bags of arborio rice from the wholesaler, and lots of basmati too, so rice may be going to feature quite a lot in the next few weeks.

My only quibble with this is that carbs are not exactly an ideal diet for me.  I need to try and ensure there are plenty of veg in the diet too... to cut down the carbs, and perhaps I should refrain from pasta more than once a week.

Polenta is a good new thing we can now eat without annoying Ned - Finn and Mark both like it and it doesn't seem quite so pernicious as other carbiforms.  So we can have that in various ways, bean stew enlivened with some sausage and pimenton eaten with a slab or two of grilled polenta seems a likely forthcoming attraction.  We can eat more couscous (another pet hate of Ned's sadly), and of course all the Spanish and Italian rice dishes we like - Ned for some reason is not keen on these, although in fairness, I got him round to bolognese sauce, so I expect he will eventually like the aroz amb forn sort of dish that I sometimes make.  Finn likes the leftovers turned into arancini di riso - so there's lot of potential there.

The ultimate frugal carbfest is the Arabic dish called megdarrah (spelling?) or Food of the Poor - a mix of lentils and rice, topped with friend onions.  As long as I can still get good cheap farm shop onions, all will be well.

Flour based foods - well, mostly pizza in our case, home-made bread of course - and occasionally scones.  I am eschewing pies on the whole - all that fat in the pastry... lethal!

And then potatoes - these have also almost doubled in price at the farm shop recently - a huge bag used to be about £7 - it's gone to £10 - but the half bags are now £7 and sometimes they don't have the cheaper whole bags - which are I think about 25kg - does that sound right?  I don't know, but they normally take about 3 months to get through.    But there are plenty of potato options... various sliced potatoes with attitude - i.e. ingredients to zing them up - anchovies (no!), bacon, onions, cream, gruyere etc.

One of the policies this autumn is not just to be frugal but deliberately to eat less meat - to ensure we have at least one meatless meal, and work towards two, although I think meals like pizza which don't use much meat are permissible, or at least count towards meatless if not actually achieving it.

The challenge is to find lots of frugal food which is meatless, very delicious and also not too fattening.  I do not wish to undo all my good work.  I want to get down at least one dress size by the spring and lose about a stone by Christmas.

Food diary 1 - Left overs & frugality

On Monday we had pork cheek casserole - because I had accidentally defrosted some, thinking I could use them for the pie I made on Friday.  I fried the pig cheeks, added some sliced leeks, then topped up with chicken stock and a little bit of wine, and some thyme and then cooked it for about two hours.  I did that on Saturday - while I was making the feast...  On Monday I reheated it, took a lot away to freeze, then added some slices of apple from our tree, a couple of tablespoons of sour cream to the stew and served it with mashed potato, cauliflower polonaise and peas.   For pudding there was left-over zuppa inglese.

On Tuesday I unearthed some bolognese sauce - and we had spaghetti bolognese.  And left over pudding, brownies etc.

On Wednesday (today) I was having a frugal, meatless moment and we experimented with Quorn... I had bought a box of Quorn burgers a while back, because they were cheap.  These chicken flavoured ones were not unpleasant, we may have them again, since Finn liked them a lot and they are very low on points.  Oven chips were discovered to be really rather disgusting compared with the real, triple-cooked ones I made last week (surprise! surprise!) and I didn't have any - but I had cauliflower and potato cakes instead, which were rather delicious (Monday's left overs mixed together with egg white and fried).  More brownies for them.

The plan for the rest of the week is that we should have a proper risotto tommorrow - risi e bisi, and a fish pie on Friday.  On Saturday we may have the virtually traditional pizza - or perhap scoff a bag of frozen barbecue stuff I bought.   On Sunday I think we will have a delicacy such as lamb fillet (found some reduced today), so I want to find something really nice to do with that (it must not involve anchovies - Finn is very suspicious of lamb since he discovered I used anchovies when doing shoulder/roast leg)..

Now that my beloved eldest son has gone of to University I feel freed up to cook all sorts of things he didn't like.  Finn will not enjoy fish pie - but that doesn't matter - he can have frankfurters or something.  I also feel the need for frugal food... but doubt whether I can lure Finn to eat offal - probably be better off with pure vegetable mixtures.

At present I am trying to roll the money as thin as it will go.  Our freezer is full and we need to eat it down a bit.  The supermarkets have already begun to fill up with Christmas goods - I bought an experimental box of cheese biscuits - I am assuming we will have enough money for cheese at Christmas - a bit!

What I am mostly eating....

We had a big family party last weekend - this is what I made for 20 people.

Hoummous and crudites, tomato focaccia, rosemary focaccia, sticky sausages

A pork pie of immense proportions, a chicken and sausagemeat pie,  stoved potatoes,  couscous salad with roast vegetables and goat cheese, spiced rice salad, green salad, beetroot salad, spiced cucumber salad, sourdough bread.

Zuppa inglese, toffee apple cheese cake and a variety of cheeses (St. Agur, Shropshire red, Chaource, Camembert).

I think people were somewhat overwhelmed by the sight of the pies - unfortunately I don't have a picture - but they looked great.

On Sunday we went out to lunch - in Thetford - where we found a mysterious Portuguese restaurant called Cheers.  It had quite a few Portuguese lunchers - and when we left we felt as if we had had a brief exposure to European life.  The food was insanely oily - or rather, my clams were - but the monkfish and prawns were OK, Mark liked his pork and clam dish, and Ned was delighted with his steak which he cooked on the hot stone at the table.  So far, so home made feeling - which I rather liked, especially as the prices were low too.  Then the three of us shared a "torta biscotta" - a very simple dish - basically layers of whipped cream with biscuits dipped in coffee - extraordinarily delicious.

Drinking vin d'orange

This is the sequel: for some reason I didn't put enough sugar in, make a nice, bitter aperitif - but I think I might have to slightly increase the sugar content next time.  Also, on this occasion there was a lot of "lees" - and even after 8 weeks the mixture was continuing to ferment - so when it was bottled it was necessary to put the lids on loosely to allow gas to continue to escape.

I strained it several times through muslin - but it didn't really do the trick.  I am not sure why this has happened, but my guess is that the weather has been so cold that the fermentation has been slower.  There has been a little fermentation before, and we once tragically lost a whole bottle when the thing overflowed when it opened...and someone wasn't speedy enough to put the top back on - so.

The other essential for enjoying vin d'orange is sunshine - and although our garden is looking pretty, green and floriferous, yet there hasn't been the "right sort of sunshine" and most of our vin d'orange has been consumed in a chilly, grey atmosphere.  

Something else to do with Seville oranges

Actually, there are tons of things - I made a wonderful Seville orange granita one year, and I'm sure it would do a good ice cream as well.  But the most favoured use of the oranges in this house is making vin d'orange.  This is a knock-out aperitif which is almost addictive.  The drawback is, you can't drink it for 2 months - then again, we wouldn't want to drink it before April usually.

On this occasion I was the proud possessor of the remains of a wine box of rose wine which had gone "past its sell by date".  So although it was not terribly unpleasant to drink, it was a bit flat - dull and unexciting, but this is not problem for vin d'orange.  Take 1.5 lits rose, cheap is good - expensive probably better, but I've never tried, slice 5 seville oranges and a lemon and mix into a large sealable container with the wine (I use a big square tupperware style box).  Then take a vanilla pod, scrape the seads into the mix, add 100ml dark rum and 250 ml vodka and 300 g caster sugar (granulated is fine).   Mix them up, seal them up and keep in a    cool place for 6-8 weeks (this means my cellar - the recipe says chill, so a fridge might be better.).   After 6-8 weeks strain, bottle and serve chilled.

I think there is too much vodka in this, we usually find the drink rather strong - two glasses seems absurd at times.  So this time we used about 150 ml vodka - and hope for the best.

The real trick is whether you can make the vin d'orange last the 6-8 weeks it takes to make the next batch. Perhaps I should just buy another box.   You can also make this wine with sweet oranges - add a bit more lemon or a bit less sugar - it won't be the same but it will still be wonderful.

Marmalade

I haven't made marmalade for a couple of years,  The last time I made it I was meant to be giving a "masterclass" to Claire Dugue - but we started drinking and laughing and forgot about the marmalade which turned into an orangey glue... it loosened up a bit after a few months apparently, but I was deeply ashamed of this terrible production.

This year, feeling ashamed at having had to BUY marmalade, I made a vast quantity.  I made two very large jars to give to aging parents (Stella and Peter) and the rest about 450 g jars - 18 of them.   I used about 3kgs of oranges, and about 5.5kg of sugar.  I do not like to use 1:2 ratio as it is much too sweet to my taste - I also use a mix of granulated sugar (about 70-80%) with dark muscovado sugar.  I bought a 5kg bag of sugar for £4.95 - and the oranges were about 65p per kg (I bought about 3.5kg - the rest I used elsewhere).  The only other ingredient was a lemon and the muscavado sugar, say £1.50 in all... and of course the gas used to cook it.  I started at about 11.30 this morning and finished at about 5.15 - so approximately 5 hours work really... but some of the boiling time was usefully occupied doing other things.

So, 20 jars of marmalade for £8.50 - about 45p a jar,. not a bad bargain at all - bet I could sell them for £2.50 or so if I put pretty labels and covers on them.... but there's no outlet for that, unless I revive my market stall.  But it would be £40 for 5 hours work - £8.00 an hour.  Quite a good whack locally.  I doubt if I could make any other product quite so cheaply... apple chutney perhaps - and if I ever had a bumper quince crop...

The trick that has really made marmalade making a joy, is being able to wash the grotty old pots in the dishwasher - spending hours scrubbing at them and drying them in the oven was a terrible bore.