Quiche with Home Made Baked Beans with Bacon

I like to buy gammon every now and again, I love it as part of a roast dinner and also for sandwiches. There's so many ways you can use it. one of my favourite ways is in a quiche, so I went back to this cheese, onion and gammon quiche here.

On a previous visit to B&M, I'd bought some haricot beans at 29 p for a tin and they'd been sitting in my cupboard for a while now. I decided that now would be the perfect time to use these up. I do like to have baked beans every now and again, but as we know the sauce is not all that great for us (even though the beans are pretty good!). I loved the idea of making my own baked beans, so thought we'd give it a try.

Ingredients:

1 tin of haricot beans, drained

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

100 g smoked bacon, chopped

1 tsp Mixed Herbs
1 tsp of sugar
tablespoon of vinegar (make sure it is gluten free)

Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Fry the bacon in a medium sized pan.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Lower the heat and cook for about 30 minutes, or until the sauce has started to thicken and reduce.

Meal Plan 17/11/13 - 23/11/13

This weeks meal plan is a mixture of trying to use some of the store cupboard ingredients up, but also the cost of this weeks shopping is slightly higher than it would have been as I have stocked up on cereal for the other half. If I see some good offers on cereals he likes, I do try and stock up on them as he tends to eat a lot of it. 

We're making more of an effort to cook something on a Friday that's kind of like a takeaway. What tends to happen sometimes on a Friday is that we'll have a nice meal planned, but we'll end up ordering instead as we feel like "treating ourselves" as it's Friday. Last weekend worked pretty well as we had home made prawn fried rice with crispy fried chicken.

Meal Plan 17/11/13 - 23/11/13

Jacket Potato with Prawns

Lentil & Bacon Soup

Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry

Gammon Quiche with home made baked beans & bacon

Italian Beef Stew

Lamb Koftas with Pitta Bread & Raita

Chicken & Leek Potato Pie

Shopping List:

Milk £1.00

Bananas ( 5 - 0.84 kg) £0.57

Gala Apples £1.00

Satsumas £1.00

Mayonnaise (750 ml) £1.18

Red Potatoes £2.25

Tinned Tomatoes x 2 £0.62

Frosted Shredded Wheats £1.00

Wheatabix 36 £2.00

Chickpeas £0.60

Ginger (5g) £0.10

Eggs £1.41

Parsnips £1.00

Chicken Thighs £3.58

Leeks £1.00

Low Fat Crème Fraiche £1.10

Jiff Lemon Juice £0.55

Whole Grain Mustard £0.58

Mature Cheese £2.00

Stewing Beef - 450 g £7.00

Lamb Mince £0.00

Butternut Squash (0.605 kg) £0.57

Mint £0.70

Garlic £0.30

Pitta Bread £0.50

Free From Pitta £2.00

Raita £1.20

Free From Bread £1.75

Bread £1.50

Tuna 2 X 3 sandwich tuna £4.00

Sweetcorn £1.20

Total £43.26

The above was bought from Asda on 16/11/13

Breakfast: Cereal, Eggs, Fruit, Bacon

Lunch: Tuna & Sweetcorn Sandwiches, Leftovers

Snacks: Apples, Bananas Satsumas, 

Leftovers:  Peppers in jar, Sweet Potato, Lentils, Bacon, Haricot Beans, Cooked Gammon

Smoked Fish Cakes

I've been a little busy with a few things lately, such as the other half's birthday earlier this week, so I've not had as much time as I would have liked to blog so I decided to take a little break.

I have to apologise for the lack of picture below, in fact I've had this recipe done for a little while but didn't have a picture for it (guess I was too keen!), but I've decided to blog this recipe for you anyway.

I made smoked fish cakes fairly recently and we both really liked them, so when I saw some smoked fish in the marked down section in Asda I put them I thought I'd buy them. I put them straight in the freezer and defrosted them in the fridge when I needed them.

I bought 2 pieces of smoked fish, 1 was haddock and the other was river cobbler (I've read online that this is actually Catfish). To me this was fairly similar to the haddock and lends itself well to fish cakes. 

Ingredients:

400 - 450 g smoked fish (see above for more details)

450 g potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 tsp chopped mixed herbs

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup gluten free flour (I used Asda Free From Plain flour)

1/4 cup polenta

Salt and Pepper

Method

1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are cooked through.
2. Meanwhile put the fish in a pan and cover with enough milk to just cover the fish, put on a medium heat and cook for approximately 10 - 15 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Drain the potatoes and leave to steam for a couple of minutes. Add some of the poaching milk and mash the potatoes.
4. Add the fish to the potato mixture, season and leave to cool.
5. When the mixture is cool enough to handle, split into 4 - 6 portions. 
6. Put the flour and polenta onto separate plates, then put the beaten egg into a bowl. 
7. Make the mixture into patties, then cover in flour, dip in the egg and then the polenta.
8. Heat a large frying pan with a little oil, then cook the fish cakes for about 3 - 4 minutes on each side.

I served mine with some home made pea puree (made out of frozen peas).

Meal Plan 03/11/13 - 09/11/13

This weeks meal plan includes a little extra as on Wednesday we're having people over for dinner. We're actually going to do a dessert as well, which will be raspberry crumble. I'm really looking forward to trying this so I'll keep you posted with how it turns out!

On Saturday I'm having people over, so I'm cooking Chilli Con Carne. I'll probably have plenty of leftovers, which will be frozen into portions or eating as lunches on the following days.

Meal Plan 03/11/13 - 09/11/13

Chicken Dinner with Vegetables and GF Stuffing

Pork Belly with Egg Fried Rice 

Smoked Fishcakes with Mushy Peas

Beetroot Risotto

Chicken Soup

Pitta Pizzas

Chilli Con Carne

Shopping List

Milk £1.00

Peanut Butter 700 g £2.37

Salad Cream £0.87

Mixed Peppers £1.00

Yoghurts £1.00

Butter £1.00

Bananas (1.15) £0.78

Gala Apples £1.00

Satsumas £1.00

Beetroot £1.60

Risotto Rice £1.10

Pecorino 160 g £2.00

Mixed Root Vegetables £1.00

Whole Chicken 2.2 kg - from the market £6.50

2 * Carrots £0.20

Broccoli £0.60

Cabbage £0.80

Cooking Bacon £0.81

Eggs £1.35

Steak Mince 2 lbs (907 kg) - from the market £3.75

3*Chopped Tomatoes £0.93

Kidney Beans £0.27

Basmati Rice 1 kg £1.88

GF Pitta Bread £2.00

2 x Mozzarella £1.16

Crème Fraiche £1.10

Continental Meat Selection £2.00

Frozen Raspberries £1.98

Total £41.05

Breakfast: Cereal, GF Oats, Toast, Eggs

Lunch: Chicken and Bacon Mayonnaise Sandwiches, Leftovers

Snacks: Apples, Bananas, Satsumas

Leftovers:  Peas, Fish ( 2 for £2.8  Asda- approx 400 g), Pork Belly (Morrisons), GF Bread, GF Porridge Oats.

Squash and Chorizo Stew

We're just loving squash at the moment and are eating a lot of it, I've also come across some different varieties in Morrisons so I decided to give the Harlequin squash a go. The taste and texture are slightly different and for me I prefer Butternut but it might be nice to mix to the 2 different types together in one stew.

This recipe was just what the cold weather ordered, a nice warming, comforting and tasty meal. As you may have noticed, I love chorizo so this recipe was ideal as it involves 2 of my favourite things.

I used 2 tins of chopped tomatoes in mine imstead of passata, this is just personal preference as this is how i like to make my tomato sauces. Instead of parsley I also used a couple of pinches of dried mixed herbs. I also added 2 chopped peppers as we had these available in the fridge.

I would suggest adding a little sugar to balance the tomato sauce a little.

Overall a very tasty, easy dish that we both enjoyed and it's such a bonus that this is low calorie as well. You don't have to make the full amount either, it's really easy to half.

You can find the recipe that I followed here on the BBC Good Food website.

Butternut Squash, Bacon and Vegetable Hash

This recipe was made out of the leftovers from another meal last week, so before the ingredients went off I thought it would be good to use them up. I do hate food waste and try to minimise it as much as possible, though I do think I could still improve this. 

This is ideal for a light supper or for lunch for 2, it's quite light and tasty. The good thing about this is that you can use up any of your leftovers from the bottom of the fridge, so feel free to experiment with this.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1/2 Butternut squash, peeled and cubed

1 Pepper, de-seeded and sliced

3 spring onions, sliced

1/2 large courgette or 1 medium, chopped into small cubes

3 eggs

1 tablespoon mixed herbs

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

100 g bacon (I used cooking bacon)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C (fan oven).
2. Put all of the vegetables into a roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle over the mixed herbs.
3. Season with salt and pepper and mixed around.
4. Put in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, or until all of the vegetables are cooked through and tender.
5. Meanwhile, chop the bacon into small pieces are fry in a large drying pan with some oil.
6. When the bacon has cooked through, add the cooked vegetables to the pan and fry off for a couple of minutes.
7. Crack the eggs into the pan and stir through until the egg has cooked.

Meal Plan 27/10/13 - 02/11/13

As we made quite a bit of soup last week, we have quite a few leftovers in the freezer. We're using some of these up, so that we can try and create some space in the freezer. The idea of this was also to keep the costs down for this week, as well as enjoying some nice comforting soups!

Meal Plan 27/10/13 - 02/11/13

Lentil and Bacon Soup

Broccoli and Stilton Soup (Leftovers)

Polish Sausage Soup (Leftovers)

Butternut Squash, Vegetable and Bacon Hash

Squash, Peppers and Chorizo Stew

Chorizo and Pepper Risotto

Spiced Carrot and Lentil Soup (leftover from last week)

Breakfast: Cereal, Porridge, Eggs, Bacon, Toast

Lunch: Tuna & Sweetcorn sandwiches, Leftovers

Snacks: Bananas, Clementines, Plums

Leftovers: Bacon, Tuna, Sweetcorn, Carrots, Eggs, Porridge Oats

Shopping List:

Milk £0.97

Bananas ( 10 - 1.72 kg) £1.17

Plums £1.00

Sweet Clementines (Marked down) £0.95

Onions £1.00

Garlic £0.25

Red Lentil 500 g £0.99

Harlequin Squash £0.60

Chopped Tomatoes £0.31

Knorr Chicken Stock Cubes (20) £2.99

Weetabix (24) £2.39

Yoghurts (2 x 4 Packs on offer) £2.00

Water £2.29

Isotonic Drinks £2.00

Genius Brown Bread £2.39

Chorizo 200 g (just over) £2.04

Peppers £1.75

Total £25.09

All of the above were bought from Morrisons on 26/10/13

The meals may be juggled around a little this week as I seem to have planned too much. So we had the Butternut squash and vegetable hash for lunch today and it was absolutely fantastic, I'll be sure to share this recipe with you soon as it was really tasty.