Day Eleven - Meals

Breakfast - toast with spread and marmalade.  

I wasn't hungry so this and two cups of coffee were all I had before I set to making my lunch.

Mid morning I had a glass of orange juice.  (1)

Lunch was destined to be a big pot of soup made with all the trimmings, peelings and vegetable waters from the freezer and fridge.

Alan was just going to have three slices of toast for his lunch so I did a swap ... a piece of his toast for a bowl of my soup.  Much healthier for him and it saved a piece of my bread for another day :-)

It was a very good swap it made my soup extremely filling.  (2)

Tea was two of my freshly made Bean Burgers on two of my yellow stickered buns.  I worked out it was a total cost, including the onion slices and the tomato ketchup of just 18p per bun.  I couldn't manage them both ...next time I'll just have one.  (2)

The dogs loved their impromptu snack of half a bean burger between the two of them, just bean burger and bread ... dogs can't eat onions so I ate them.

Yay ... I managed my 5 a day.

😎

Day Eleven - This Week's Three

The Net Tunnel is a wild and wacky place at the moment, but there is food in there ... lots of lovely food.  Luckily most of it is the sort of foods that you leave in the ground and harvest as and when you need it, so it stays there until just then.

We have cauliflowers, cabbages, leeks, carrots, turnips and some potatoes that are still waiting to be tipped out.  I'm sure there are more bits and bobs but I can't remember and it's raining here too hard to go and check!!

This week I am having two from the tunnels :

Spinach and Baby Leeks.

The Spinach stems washed and chopped, and then weighed before being popped into the freezer ready for soup making.

The leaves were briefly blanched and then chopped and are being frozen as cubes.

Two cubes make half of one of my five a day.

I have also chosen Apples as my other allowable three homegrown items each week.  Mostly because the winds of last week brought down ALL the apples from our young apple tree in the orchard and I wanted to use up the slightly bruised ones.  The others have been stored in the Apple Store in the shed. 

 But also because I want to up my fruit consumption slightly.

I chose the four that needed to be used first, they have been photographed 'good side up' but they were a bit bruised and needed dealing with straight away.

So they were peeled, cored, sliced and then dropped into salted water for a while.  Before being patted dry ...

... and boxed up ready for the freezer.

I think a spot of Apple Crumble is called for, or maybe a pie or pasty.

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Day Ten - Meals

Breakfast - Toast with spread and marmalade

This bread is really thin, I think when I need a replacement I would do better to watch out for a 'yellow stickered bargain' loaf rather than buy another 55p value one.  But saying that, it does the job and the marmalade is really nice, something I would buy again after this Challenge if I haven't any of my own homemade marmalade in stock.

Lunch was a bit different.

 I really fancied some of my yogurt, so that's what I had with one of my bananas.  Usually I have three portions out of one of those big tubs, but this time I read the pack and it said 'contains 4 servings' so I weighed it out into my dish, and you know what ... it was plenty!!   (1)

Tea was the pasty that I posted about making earlier, covered with some more of my 20p gravy ... it's no different to the Bisto I usually buy ... so another definite keeper.  (1)

For a spot of supper when we got back from the cinema we each had one of the little Marmalade Tarts, made from the trimmings of pastry with a cup of coffee.

A nice round up to a tasty ... although low on my 5 a day day.

But with the satisfaction of clearing the fridge of lots of the leftovers from previous meals.

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Day Ten - Leftovers in Pastry

Last nights meal gave me lots of lovely leftovers, and they were purposeful leftovers.  Things I had made too much of on purpose as I knew exactly what I wanted them for.

Even the peelings from the potatoes and the carrots have been washed, patted dry and put into a bag in the freezer.  These will be added to a pot of soup, as will the cooking water from both, into which I put a couple of spoonfuls of Universal Seasoning while it was still hot.

I used half the pack of stuffing mix and formed it into three patties, knowing full well that I would only be eating two of them, but doing it this way saves me time the next day when I already have some made up mix to add to the next dish.  

I love saving time ... almost as much as I love saving money  :-)

The third patty, along with the leftover gravy and the mashed up potatoes and carrots has been tipped into a bowl ready to make a pasty for my tea.  The pastry is the other half of the portion I made last week and froze.  I left it in the fridge overnight to thaw out slowly and then pulled it out of the fridge while I got on with assembling everything else to bring it to room temperature, now it is nice and workable.

Pasty Making Step by Step

Roll out your pastry.

I do it between two sheets of clingfilm these days as it means you don't need more flour on the worktop, which as well as using up more of your flour, dries out the pastry and makes any re-rollings much harder to work and not as tasty.

As you can see from the photo above I put my filling into a small bowl and divide the mixture visually.  Last week I just half filled the bowl,  either way this gives you a nice neat shape to fill the pasty and means that you have a filled to capacity pasty with no air gaps.

Next I use a pastry brush to wet around the edges of the filling ...

... so that when I use the cling film flip the pastry over the filling I can push it together and the pastry sticks to itself nicely.  

Then trim off any excess pastry, leaving enough to once again go around the edge with some more water and then fold over the pastry and crimp, either with your fingers as I do or fold over and push down with the back of the prongs of a fork for a fancy edging.

I accidentally made a couple of little tears when I was crimping so I simply repaired them with a little bit of the excess pastry, once again sticking in place with water.

After making anything with pastry I usually put my assembled pie or pasty into the fridge for at least ten minutes to chill before baking.

The trimmed off excess pastry was rolled into a little ball, flattened out with a rolling pin ...

... and used to make two Jam Tarts.

 (Well Marmalade Tarts in my case as that's all I have.)

The other half of the filling mix has now been wrapped in clingfilm (yes the same clingfilm that I used for rolling out purposes, waste not want not) and is in the freezer.  Still in the bowl while it freezes and then it will be bagged up ready to be used as another pasty filling sometime during the next two weeks.

😎

Day Nine - Meals

Breakfast - Porridge.

We're both having a lot of porridge at the moment, but it's a lovely filling and warming start to a busy day.

Lunch was a bit similar to this, but served with a large side salad.   (3)

I went to visit Mum in Manchester,  and we went for lunch at Wyevale where currently on the specials menu is a very tasty vegan Parmigiana.  It was delicious.

I am allowing myself this step away from the Challenge - because I'm the boss and I can!!

After driving home and dreaming of stuffing balls (like you do) I called at Tesco and picked up the shopping shown on the last post.  This formed the basis of a very tasty and filling tea.  (1)

Four of my five a day managed today.

😎

Day Nine - Shopping

So here we are in Week Two and I decided whilst I was at Asda buying some none food items for the house to get in some supplies for the Challenge.

My usual yogurt was on offer at just £1 so I decided to have a bit of normality in my life and pick up a tub.  It will do me four breakfasts along with some of my fruit ... these two bananas and perhaps some of the tinned peaches or mandarin pieces.

I also bought the orange juice as I am painfully aware that my fruit and vegetable consumption is below what I thought it would be.  Just a glass a day over four days will help pull the numbers up, and no doubt be good for me too.

So I spent a total of £2.10 in Asda

And to bring things up to date (I get to use the computer on a very intermittent basis at the moment so I am doing this shopping on the same post) I bought these last night from Tesco.

Of all things I was fancying some stuffing balls.  Tesco used to do a basics line box for just 15p but seemingly that has been discontinued, the same size box of their own brand label was 25p but this larger one was just 40p so seemed a much better buy.  Of course with stuffing balls you need some gravy ... well I do ... so I bought some of their new label 'Stockwell' gravy mix,totally vegan and just 20p.  Stockwell has replaced the old basics 'stripey line' in a lot of the packet foods.

And then I had a peruse of the Reduced Section and came across these bread rolls for just 16p, it was a no brainer I just had to get them.  Now some of my stuffing mix, some beans and maybe something else will be turned into burgers to go onto my new 3p each buns.

A total of 76p was spent in Tesco.

So this weeks shopping has set me back the grand sum of £2.86.

I have £6.61 left in cash for the final two weeks.

😎

Day Eight - Meals

Breakfast - A bowl of porridge.

Photographed with the Sainsbury's coupons that had just arrived simply to add a bit of interest to photo.  I won't be using any of the coupons while the Challenge is on ... as I haven't got £20 left to spend!!

Lunch, a nice big bowl of soup with a chopped up slice of toast ...gosh that was filling.  (3)

After a busy day and an evening taken up with phone calls I really wasn't that hungry so I decided a simple baked potato would suffice for a late tea/early supper.

Unfortunately potato doesn't count towards your five a day, so once again I am sadly lacking.

Only 3 of my five a day managed.

😎