Breakfast - Porridge with Peaches and a small glass of orange juice.
As I'm having porridge three times this week I will have a third of the tin of peach slices on each porridge day, they do taste really nice together. The orange juice is being divided between all seven days of the Challenge as I really don't like too much at one time.
After breakfast I started to make my pasta sauce ready for my evening meal. I am making a three portion batch to use with all three of my pasta meals this week. Which of course meant opening all three of the tins of tomatoes, the saved portion will be used for my Thursday Spicy Tomato Soup lunch.
I had the brainwave of using the potato water saved from cooking the potatoes yesterday to rinse out the three tomato tins. Any added flavour is good flavour when you have no stock cubes :-)
I decided to use all of the cherry tomatoes in this recipe as they were going a bit squidgy, I will save the four larger tomatoes to use in my salads and sandwiches.
Recipe
Pasta Sauce
tinned tomatoes (2 1/3 this time for me)
1 red pepper
3 red onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 sticks of celery
olive oil
mixed herbs
chilli flakes
seasoning
Chop the pepper, onions and celery and place in a roasting tin. Drizzle over a tablespoon or so of olive oil, sprinkle with herbs and chilli flakes, season lightly. Roast in a moderate over for around 40 - 60 minutes. Stirring a couple of times.
( Roasting the veggies this way really intensifies the flavour and is well worth doing. To save on energy costs you could do it while you have the oven on for something else the day before you need the veggies, as they keep really well in the fridge for a few days. )
( Roasting the veggies this way really intensifies the flavour and is well worth doing. To save on energy costs you could do it while you have the oven on for something else the day before you need the veggies, as they keep really well in the fridge for a few days. )
Tip the hot roasted vegetables into the tinned tomatoes and stir well, whizz up with a stick blender or tip into a blender and zap. Or if you prefer it can just be left chunky or a mixture of the two … which is my preference.
Either heat now on a low hob for around 15 - 20 minutes if you are using it straight away, or check for seasoning and leave for later use.
I always find the flavour is so much better if you assemble this earlier in the day and then reheat later.
This is what it looked like before I whizzed it up with my stick blender.
Once my pasta sauce was tipped into a storage tub and put into the fridge I started to make my soup for lunch. (I only have one saucepan here at the Van so a bit of cookery juggling is always called for.) The jug of potato water has just had the stick blender stick rinsed off in it … waste not want not and all that, all the more flavour for my soup. I also didn't wash the pan out between recipes.
Sautéing the chopped vegetables briefly in oil is worth doing if you can, if you are watching your weight (I've just read that 1 tablespoon of oil adds over 100 calories) you can do this in water instead.
Dinner - Herby Carrot Soup and Toast
Words cannot begin to say how delicious this was, So simple to make and yet so filling and tasty, and exactly what I needed on a cold frosty day.
Recipe
Herby Carrot Soup
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
1 onion
olive oil
mixed herbs
seasoning
Chop the carrots, onion and celery into smallish pieces and sauté in olive oil for a couple of minutes then pour in the stock or water, add the herbs and lightly season.
Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer until the carrots are tender.
Whizz up with a stick blender and serve.
Before I made my tea I whizzed up one of the bread crusts and sautéed them lightly in some olive oil flavoured with a crushed garlic clove. They were used to top my Pasta Bake, which was simply 125g penne pasta with a third of the suace made earlier.
Tea - Pasta Bake with Garlicky Breadcrumbs
After the success of my lunch I was on a high ... this brought me tumbling down!!
It was too dry and too stodgy, and I'm afraid once it was cold half of it went into a bag to be fed to the caravan park ducks the next morning. It filled me up though, so I shouldn't grumble too much.
Five a Day = 7
(it would have been 8 if I'd eaten all my tea ... naughty girl!!)
Sue xx
I've got loads of fruit in the freezer - home grown and shop bought, must start getting it out and having with porridge, I keep forgetting about it. Thanks for the reminder, Sue! Pity your tea was a bit disappointing, I wonder what you can do to liven it up for the next couple of portions.
ReplyDeleteThe sauce was fine so the other planned meals should be okay, maybe it was just the breadcrumbs making it too stodgy ☹️
DeleteI love porridge it is do versatile but it doesn't fill me up. Another great day Sue.
ReplyDeleteI'm the same, Tania - I like it but find myself hungry again before lunch. I find adding some protein in the form of nuts and seeds helps.
DeleteI usually have much chunkier mixed oats and grains which are more filling, but these value oats are the ones left over from the first Price of a Coffee Challenge. I think I ate too much porridge that week so I'm fed up with it now 🥴
DeleteWhen I have porridge, I add a little cinamon, a grated apple and a handful of sultanas, this makes a huge difference. Or my other favorite, although I have it less often, is bluberries, a spoonful of ground almonds and some coconut, lovley almost like a pudding. Helen S.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds lovely, using porridge as the base of a lovely concoction like those really is the way forward isn't it. Not something I can do with the limited resources this week I'm afraid, but I'll try these ideas out in the not too distant future, thanks. Pudding for breakfast sounds lush :-)
DeleteYour soup and pasta sauce look amazing.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Thank you, they were tasty and very nutrient dense. xx
DeleteYes, sauteed vegies make a huge difference in some recipes,Pea and ham hock soup tastes so bland without that simple step.
ReplyDeleteThe best pasta sauce I ever made was a day with multiple power blackouts, it literally took all day to finish but it tasted awesome.