Bangers and mash with onion gravy

So we had some leftover gluten free sausages in the freezer, so decided that we would have bangers and mash. It's sometimes good to have something easy and comforting. Also, I do like to have sausages every now and again. 

We cooked our sausages in the oven. Fried some onions on a low light and used Anthony Worrall Thompsons Gravy and served with some home made mashed potatoes with milk and butter. We do make our own gravy, but sometimes it's good to have something that takes no effort.

This time we used Asda's Butchers Selection Gluten Free Pork Sausages, they were 2 packets for £3.50 when we bought them (I checked this on 18/04/13 and they still had the offer on). These sausages tasted nice, had a nice texture and had 72% British pork in them. I would definitely buy these sausages again, particularly because they weren't expensive when buying 2 packs. I must admit though that I do also like D&A Pork Sausages Harrogate. They are 97%, extremely meaty and taste great, but are that little bit more expensive at £2.60. 

Keralan prawns

We had half a pack of frozen king prawns left in the freezer, so decided that we needed a recipe to use these up. We both love prawns and curry, so we thought this would be a great way to use our leftovers. I was also pretty impressed with the low calories in this recipe.

Once the sauce had cooked out a little, the flavours started to come through. We did make some slight alterations to the recipe though: 1 spoonful of sugar, an extra garlic clove, chilli flakes and salt and pepper. This seemed to balance out the flavours a bit. 

If you're looking for an easy, low fuss and low calorie mid week meal then this is the recipe to try. You could add some extra spices or curry paste, if you are looking for a more "traditional" curry but I enjoyed this recipe and it was naturally gluten free.

You can find the recipe i used here.

Mushroom and rice one pot

This mushroom and rice one pot was a very easy dinner to make, hardly any fuss and not a lot of preparation time. It would be great for an easy evening meal, when you don't want to spend hours slaving over a hot stove. It has a really good flavour to it and I really do love mushrooms, so guess you could always add some different types for different textures too.

I think that I will definitely be making this recipe again, not only is the flavour good but it seems like a great base to use your leftovers in your fridge and cupboards. I would love to use chorizo in this recipe (but then again, I love chorizo and I'd like to use it in every recipe ;-) ).

You can find the recipe that I used here, I didn't really use any substitutions this time as I was just using the leftovers that I had before shopping for the week ahead. I will definitely be changing the flavours up a bit next time though.

Notes: Make sure that your stock is gluten free, I used Knorr stock cubes.

Meal Plans 14/04/13 - 20/04/13

This week the meals that I've planned are an attempt at trying to balance out our diet to make sure that we're not eating the same thing, as well as use up some of the leftovers in the freezer. On the Sunday, we're going to my mums for dinner, so there will only be 6 dinners planned this week.

Meal plan for 14/04/13 to 20/04/13

Gluten free spaghetti bolognese (with lentils and carrots)

Baked potatoes with tuna mayo and sweetcorn

Pork Steaks, wedges and home made coleslaw

Keralan Prawns and rice

Bangers and mash with onion gravy

Thai green chicken curry

This is my shopping list that I got from Asda on 14/04/13 except the baby aubergines:

Shopping list:

Seeded batch loaf £1.50

Warburtons Newburn White Bread £2.48

Eggs  x 12 free range £1.98

Bananas (1.52 kg) £1.03

Gluten free spaghetti £1.40

Coriander £0.65

White cabbage £0.64

Shreddies (500 g) £1.00

Whole earth organic and gluten free cornflakes £1.48

Sweetcorn (sweet crisp) £0.57

Carver ham £6.00

Extra  lean beef mince 250 g £2.15

Thai green curry paste £1.98

Tuna (2 cans) £1.94

Cucumber £0.50

Chicken thigh fillets (515 g) £3.58

Urban apple and pear x 1 and mango £3.00

Fresh ginger (0.095 kg) £0.20

Natural low fat yoghurt £0.45

Milk (4 pints) £1.00

Lemon grass £0.67

Philadelphia (2 x 200 g) £2.00

Carrots (0.735 kg) £0.66

Coconut milk £1.19

Oranges £0.50

Tomato Purée £0.55

Sugar £1.38

Basmati rice (1 kg) £1.48

Desiree potatoes £1.98

Lime £0.30

Onions £1.00

Baby aubergines (from Sainsbury's) £1.69

Pork steaks £2.00

2 x chopped tomatoes £0.78 

Total £49.71

Leftovers in the freezer: 1/2 pack of frozen raw king prawns, 1 pack of gluten free sausages, millet flakes

Breakfasts: Cornflakes, Eggs, Millet porridge, Toast

Lunches: Sandwiches (Ham or Egg mayonnaise), leftovers

Snacks: Packs of urban apple and pear, urban packet of mango

Notes: My boyfriend isn't gluten free so he does eat cereal and bread with gluten in them.

Sweet potato, spinach and lentil dahl

When we were thinking about what to eat this week, we knew we had quite a lot of beef on the menu after making the salt beef, so decided that putting some more vegetables on the menu would be in order. What I'm coming to realise is that meat does not have to be the centre piece of every meal, some vegetarian dishes are just as tasty and do not leave you wanting afterwards.

My boyfriend and I are both curry lovers and I really liked the look of this lentil dahl recipe. The flavour really came through and the addition of the sweet potato and spinach made for a really tasty meal. It's definitely something that we would make again. I say we, but the lovely boyfriend made this last night ;-) 

I know the curry might not look like much, but believe me it comes through on flavour and it was low in calories. 

The recipe we used was here, the only change we made to this recipe was that we seasoned it and put some sugar in the recipe to help balance out the flavours. We also used Knorr stock cubes as they are gluten free. I recommend that you give this recipe a try, it would be good recipe to have mid week as it only takes half an hour to cook. The portion sizes are also pretty decent.

If you do decide to make this or have made something similar, please feel free to share.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Lentil Ragu

Trying to keep your food budget down, with the seemingly ever increasing prices and trying to eat healthily can feel hard at times. This is one of the reasons why I'm trying to incorporate more vegetables, beans and pulses into my diet and recipes. I spied this recipe and thought it would be worth trying out.

The recipe gave extremely generous portions,  I would actually say that it could easily feed 8 people and I was pretty pleased with the end result.

The original recipe does need some tweaking though, I added some Henderson's relish to the onions, carrots, celery and garlic when they were frying in the pan. This gave it a little more flavour, but perhaps it was still missing something. Next time, I will be adding a bit more tomato purée to this recipe, to make sure that the tomato taste comes through quite strongly.

I think I enjoyed this recipe more than my other half, who thought that the recipe tasted more like a lentil stew so wasn't so keen on eating this over pasta. I don't think we're quite ready to write this recipe off yet and think that there is a lot of potential for this. It would be a great opportunity to use up any leftover vegetables. 

Next time I will be using lentils to bulk up a regular spaghetti bolognese, rather than leaving the meat out 

entirely. Hopefully this will give us the flavour and texture balance that we're looking for without breaking the bank. I'll also still use this recipe to make the base for a lentil stew recipe instead.

You can find the recipe that I used here.

Notes:
I used gluten free spaghetti bought from asda and knorr vegetable stock cubes.

Meal Plans 07/04/13 - 13/04/13

For over a week now, there's been in an invader taking over a full shelf in the fridge. My boyfriend decided that he wanted to make salt beef, following a trip to Winchester that we had last year. On this particular day, his dad and step mum had taken us to a farmers market, where we'd had this amazing salt beef. We've both been looking forward to trying it so much, that the original dinner plans that we had went out the window, so this week we'll be using those leftover ingredients and making use of our leftover meat (it was approximately 2.5 kg so there will be leftovers).

Meals Planned 07/04/13 - 13/04/13

Lentil Ragu with spaghetti

Beef Tacos

Mushroom and rice one pot

Beef with mashed potatoes and vegetables

Sweet potato, spinach and lentil dahl

Salt beef sandwiches

Leftovers

I've not included a shopping list this week as we've had some leftovers from last night and we've already bought the beef previously. Overall though this has cost us approximately £55 to £60 for the full week.