from veg to meatballs to pasta bake

Using up: veg

As stated last week, we are over-vegged, and need to use it up before we go away for the long weekend that’s coming up.

So, on Friday night, I chopped up four red peppers, two onions, several mushrooms, and four (I think) courgettes.  These were sautéd down in my huge shallow Circulon pan (the one that’s too big to go in any of the cupboards) with some olive oil, a fair bit of garlic, and sage and oregano from the garden.

Then I took a bag of Ikea meatballs (great standby for the freezer!) and turfed them into the mix, and added a carton of creamed tomatoes (another great standby).  Bit of salt and pepper, and left to cook through for about 20 minutes.  We consumed two goodly portions with spaghetti.

On Saturday morning, I put another 3 meals’ worth into 2-portion tubs, and froze them, keeping back about 300ml of veggy sauce.

And on Sunday evening feeling, as we were, rather depleted, due to an *excellent* party on Saturday, 120 miles from home, we boiled some pasta shells, dumped a can of borlotti beans into the leftover sauce, and mixed the pasta and sauce together.  A mozzarella chopped over the top, and some basil from the garden, 20 minutes in the oven - bosh.  Dinner.  Hardly any effort, and really nice.

So, one bag of meatballs, an assortment of tired vegetables, a tin of borlotti beans and a carton of passata - 10 meals.  Gotta be good :)

Powered by Bookmarkify™

green cleaning

I try very hard not to buy proprietary cleaning stuff - they’re stuffed full of chemicals, cost a fortune, and are usually not needed.  What we do buy - washing up liquid, washing powder - we try to have eco-friendly stuff.

Normally I get buy with bicarb of soda, and vinegar (but not together!).  Bicarb is a magical thing - you can clean almost anything with it; I used it to clean some tarnished silver earrings the other day!  For bad stuff - perhaps a burnt-on pan (but not an aluminium one, please) - just make a paste of bicarb and water, and brush it on.  Leave for an hour or so, then clean it off and voila - no burn.  You can get grease off a cooker with it, too.

Vinegar is a great cleaning substance too - and don’t worry about the smell, because it will disappear within 20 minutes or so.  I use it for worktops and so on.  Also, for cleaning the floors, I have a handy steam mop, which uses no chemicals at all; it’s also terrific at cleaning the bathroom tiles, windows, and so on.

Also for the bathroom, I can strongly recommend the bathroom set from Deeply Clean -  the sponge cleans the bath with no added chemicals, and gets all the horrid soap scum off.  You can get this from Sainsburys, and I think Oxfam shops sell it too.

And this post was actually inspired by Sharon’s post on Finding Simplicity, about making your own multipurpose cleaning fluid innabottle, which I shall try out forthwith - thanks!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

planning ahead

Me and himself have been a bit unwell this week, and not up to cooking.  We are thus building up a bit of a glut of vegetables, and we are away this Saturday night, and Friday/Saturday/Sunday next weekend.

I’ll cancel next week’s veg box, but we have about 6 courgettes, 4 red peppers (I foolishly bought some on Saturday, then more arrived in the box), an aubergine, half a cabbage and a stack of runner beans to deal with.

The thought of having to chuck any of this away fills me with horror, so I’ve been giving some though on how to deal with it all, especially as I’m not likely to have much time before we leave for the Bank Holiday weekend.

There’s a bag of naked meatballs in the freezer, so I’m going to make a sauce with tomatoes, red peppers and courgettes (and onions and herbs from the garden) and freeze some portions of that.  I’m going to have a bash at a lentil moussaka filling, which will see off the aubergine, and the runner beans will be cooked up in an Indian style, and a portion or two frozen.

The cabbage we will see off tonight, with some mozzarella and bacon (which also needs dealing with).

Oh, and there’s a pak choi left - I have a vague plan to stir fry it with some other bitsa, and put it into wraps for lunch tomorrow.  I feel really quite remarkably organised!

[edit] Aaargh - there’s a stack of fresh peas too!  Help …

Powered by Bookmarkify™

nothing to report

I’ve been quite remiss over the past few days … Pete cooked something very nice on Thursday involving broad beans, polish sausage, onions, garlic and spices, but he hasn’t written it up, so I can’t post that.

On Friday, I’m afraid we had fish and chips - not even very nice, but we fancied a treat.  Then on Saturday he took me to lunch at the Persian café for a break, because I was working most of the weekend.  So I just made a gingerbread, and we had crackers and marmite (for me - can’t remember what he had on his).

We had a brunch on Sunday - scrambled eggs, bacon and mushrooms, and a bagel, and Pete cooked Indian cabbage for supper.

And tonight? Lord knows, as P is asleep in bed, where he took himself to this afternoon after feeling rather green.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

what a cool idea! (sorry..)

I just got an e-mail from Riverford about their new eco cool box for veg deliveries - what a great idea!

I’m quite tempted by one myself, and I’m at home when the box arrives :)

Powered by Bookmarkify™

mongrel soup

As mentioned previously, soup was in the offing. I boiled up the chickie! carcass from the freezer yesterday, and used the stock to make ris e bisi, and very nice it was too.

The rest has been turned into soup, with some carrots, some exceedingly wrinkled potatoes and - believe it or not - a brace of small lettuces.  P and I are not keen on lettuce, so this is as good as anything else to do with them.  Sadly, I set it on too low a gas, and so the soup was not ready for lunch, but it will be there for tomorrow.

And there were some fragments of chicken rescued from the carcass when it was en-stocked, and for these I have a cunning plan.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

I love my freezer …

It is the Summer; and thus it is cold, and raining, and generally bloody miserable, weather wise.

In the fridge I have some peapods - mostly empty, because Pete got to the bowl of peas, but still. I have a plan for these pods tonight, which I shall reveal to you later. I need some chicken stock for this plan, and I was just going to use an organic stock cube.

But … I also have a bunch of carrots that need using.  And the chickie! remains from June were in the freezer, enrobed in tin foil.  So the carcass is now sitting on a very low heat on the hob, and I shall take some stock from it for tonight’s supper, and the rest will be turned into shoop, with the carrots and some elderly spud.

Hurrah for the British summer, I say, and bring on the warming soup.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

duck and pineapple stirfry

No photo, I’m afraid, as the household was a tad fraught last night, due to one thing and another.

I bought a pineapple last week, and Pete brought home a huge bunch of coriander.  We were going to have pork and pineapple, but somehow we ate all the coriander with other things.  Then when I went to get the basil from the fridge for Thursday night’s pasta, I realised that we had enough to open a market stall.

So yesterday morning, I took a duck breast from the freezer ready for a stirfry.  Pete manfully chopped up the pineapple - in fact he cooked the whole thing.

A tip if you’re stir frying duck is to steam it over some boiling water for a few minutes, skin side down.  It causes the fat to crisp up nicely.

He stir fried the duck first, then set it aside; then he fried the usual suspects - green onion, mushrooms, garlic, ginger, added the duck back to the wok, added some pineapple and the remaining basil.  Delicious!

We had the rest of the pineapple for breakfast this morning, combined with some strawberries.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

living without plastic

Here’s an article about a woman who has vowed not to buy any plastic for a month - so no, yoghurt, bread or fruit in bags, chinese takeaways, bottled water or other drinks, milk in bottled (wonder what she’s doing about Tetrapak) etc.

Of course, like all these things, it’s not as simple as it at first appears.  Plastic cuts down waste by preserving food, by protecting it during transportation, etc.  But anything that helps to reduce the ridiculous amount of packaging we are almost forced to buy seems to me to be A Good Thing.

Christine Jeavons will be blogging about her month.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

the last slice

We fancied toast for lunch today, for a change, so we hauled the sliced white out of the freezer.

Pete removed the bread from its wrapped, pulled off four slices, and was about to throw the last two, rather squashed ones, into the compost bowl.  Bad, bad, bad.

Stale bread can be turned into breadcrumbs using a food processor or liquidiser, then frozen.  Great for gratin topping on veg or whatever - don’t waste it!

Powered by Bookmarkify™