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.

Chocolate Mousse

I've been feeling a little under the weather this last week and to treat myself today I felt like eating something a little sweet. I did contemplate making a cake or baking something, but instead decided on a simple mousse instead. Just because it's easy to make though, makes it no less delicious and chocolatey!

The mousse itself was nice, chocolatey and light so it was not too heavy and sickly. I think that next time I make this, I'll serve it with some fruit such as raspberries or strawberries (when they come into season) and potentially a double layered mousse made with white chocolate.

You can find the recipe I used here, I halved the recipe to make 2 portions (made with 4 smallish eggs).

What do you like to eat when you are feeling a little under the weather?

Green Garden Vegetable Pie

As a big meat lover, I always thought my plate would be a little lacking without the meat. I've been wanting to eat more vegetables in the hope that it would help us both to get a little healthier, as well as helping cut the costs of the shopping down. I needn't have worried about cutting the meat out though, as this recipe  was delicious. It had a lovely creamy cheese sauce, great tasting vegetables and a nice crisp cheese and potato topping. What more can you ask for?

There's no reason why you can't use leftover vegetables after your Sunday roast or any that you have laying around. It'd be a good way to use them up and taste good at the same time. 

This particular recipe serves 4 as a main, with good size portions. There's also no reason why you can't serve this as a side dish to a nice roast such as beef. As an accompaniment, I think this would serve approximately 6 -8.

The original recipe that I have adapted is here.

Ingredients:

50g butter

2 tsp mustard powder

600ml milk

200g mature cheddar cheese, grated

15g parmesan cheese (optional)

2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced into rounds

1 head of broccoli, cut into florets

1 carrot, peeled, cut in half and sliced

200g frozen peas

small bunch of chives, snipped

50g gluten free flour (I used Asda's Free From)

1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets

1 tsp of garlic salt

salt

pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 220 C, 200 Fan, Gas 7 and boil the kettle.
2. Add the butter to the pan and melt, put the mustard and flour into the pan and cook for 1 minute.
3. Add the milk in little by little, stirring constantly to avoid getting any lumps. At this point you should also add the salt, garlic salt and pepper.
4.  When you've added all of the milk and the sauce thickens, you can take it off the heat and add most of the grated cheese to the pan. You just need a little put the side to sprinkle over the top of the dish later.
5. Preheat a large pan, put the boiling water into the pan and add the potatoes. Boil for 5 minutes, add the cauliflower, broccoli and carrot and cook for 3 minutes. Add the peas and leave for 1 more minute. You can leave for a little longer if you like your vegetables really well cooked through and soft.
6. Drain all of the vegetables and leave enough sliced potatoes to the side to cover the casserole dish. 
7. Add the vegetables, sauce and chives together and mix well. Put them into the casserole dish, cover with the sliced potatoes and sprinkle the cheese on top. You can also grate the parmesan on top at this point, if you are using it. 
8. Put into the oven and cook for approximately 25 minutes, until it is fully cooked through and nice and golden on the top.

We found that the parmesan gave the dish a little extra taste. This is definitely something that I would try again. Next time, we may try some chopped, fried bacon in for a different taste. 

Meal Plan 31/03/13 to 06/04/13

This week we have really tried to cut a lot of the meat out of our diets and replace it with vegetables, seafood and fish. We will not be cutting all of the meat in our diet, but we thought that it would be good to vary our diet more as we think we've been eating a little too much of it lately!

On the Sunday we went out for dinner and on one of the days we will be having leftovers. There are only 2 us, so tend to have plenty. Sometimes we take them to work for lunches.

Meal Plan for 31/03/13 to 06/04/13

Mediterranean tuna and rice bake

Sweet chilli prawn stir fry

Green garden vegetable pie

Aubergine parmesan

Lentil ragu

Leftovers

The shopping list below was checked on asda.com on 29/03:

Onions - £0.85

Carrots (500 g ) - £0.50

Celery - £0.89

Garlic (1 bulb) - £0.30

Red lentils - £1.28 (I actually bought mine from the local market for £0.60)

4 x boxes of chopped tomatoes - £1.50

Tomato purée - £0.55

500 g gluten free  spaghetti - £1.30 

Vegetable Stock Cube - £1.67 *

1 large aubergine - £0.50

1 low fat mozzarella ball - £0.83

100 g grated parmesan - £1.68 *

2 large potatoes - £1.50

200 g mature cheddar cheese - £2.00

1 head of broccoli - £1.00

Frozen peas - £1.60

Small bunch of chives - £0.60

1 head of cauliflower - £0.50

Long grain rice (500 g) - £0.40

1 jar sun dried tomatoes - £1.37

1 large courgette - £1.47 (this is approximate)

200 g Greek feta cheese - £1.00

Mixed salad leaves- £1.00

Sweet chilli sauce -£1.20

King prawns (380 g) - £5.00

1 can of tune in brine or spring water - £1.00 *

Total - £32.74

* These items are actually in my store cupboard or fridge already so I actually did not need to buy these.