Weekly menu and recipes!

[jamethiel]

So, I have the day off! That equals me posting!

First things first: how are your challenges going? I am doing REALLY WELL. I have eaten a packed lunch every single day, made dinner every single night and only bought hot cross buns once.

So: the menu for this week.
Friday: Home-made Sourdough bread bruschetta
Saturday: Kangaroo Bolognaise and salad
Sunday: Left over Pearl Barley and Vege soup (told you that was a lifesaver)
Monday: Beef and Turnip casserole
Tuesday: Salad and Beef roll as I was out at Photography class
Wednesday: Oriental style Chicken and Noodle soup
Thursday: Vaguely Moroccanish Lamb with lentils
Tonight: Hamas curry

If you want any of the recipes, just comment~

Today's recipe (which was for breakfast, but anyway)
World's best baked beans.


400g of a mix of dried beans. I use borlotti, navy, and black-eyed beans.
1 large onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 carrots
2 rashers of thick bacon
2 sweet peppers (capsicum)
1/2 a bottle of passata
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
1 teaspoon of smoky paprika
1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander
black pepper
1 tablespoon of maple syrup.


The day before, soak the beans for 12 hours.

Chop the onion, carrot, capsicum and bacon. Mince the garlic.

Drain the beans and combine the ingredients, either in a crockpot or an ovenproof casserole dish.

Crockpot cooking.
Leave the dish cooking overnight. You'll have fresh baked beans in the morning.

Oven cooking
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Add sufficient water to cover the beans by two inches. Seal the casserole and bake for at least 4 hours. Stir well after 2 hours, adjusting the liquid level if necessary.

Comments

[bewize]

I've actually really enjoyed the cooking at home challenge. I cheated once a bit - over at a friend's house - and we ordered pizza. Otherwise, even when a bunch of us went to a cabin this weekend, we cooked.

:)

[holyschist]

I am intrigued by Vaguely Moroccanish Lamb with lentils and would love a recipe!

We've done pretty well on cooking the last couple weeks. We've eaten out a little, but FAR less, and no McDonald's or Wendy's (I'm trying for "if we eat out, something cheap and relatively healthy is preferable"); I've also been packing my lunches for work out of necessity (I'll probably go back to buying lunches next month, different job).

I got a very well-paid internship for the summer, so my ability to pay rent and keep making inroads in my debt is probably good through September, by which point I sure hope I get a decent job or have some more regular temping lined up.

[jamethiel]

This quantity feeds 8-10 and freezes amazingly

Ingredients
1.25 kg of lamb, cubed in 1.5 inch chunks
500g green/brown lentils
2 medium brown onions
200g dried apricots
1L beef stock (more if you cook it on the stovetop/oven)
1 cup of water

Marinade
175 mL citrus juice (I usually use a lemon and an orange)
2 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves (minced)
2 strips of lemon peel/citrus peel
1 tbsp dried ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

12+ hours prior, combine the marinade and the lamb. Cover and leave in the fridge for 24 hours.

Slice the onions and brown. Layer onions, lentils, dried apricots and meat in thin layers until all the ingredients are used

Tip the remainder of the marinade and the stock and water. Cover and (oven) either simmer on low for 4 hours or (crockpot) turn onto low and cook for 8 hours. If you cook it on the oven, cover the solids with 1-2 inches of liquid and check it every hour, stirring.

Let me know if you have questions!

[holyschist]

That looks so good! Thank you!

[kyrielle]

Oh, that sounds marvelous!

[journeys_end]

Housemate has had the week off from work and took over the cooking so I've been good this week :).

The baked beans sounds yum! I think I'll give it a try today and maybe serve it for family brunch tomorrow. Thanks for the recipe!

[jamethiel]

Ooh! The one thing I forgot to put in there was worchestershire sauce. Add a tablespoon!

Also, the original recipe says not to add the maple syrup until two hours are up. I'm not sure why: we've always added everything together in the crockpot. But let me know how it goes!

[journeys_end]

Yeah, I'm a bit of a one-pot cook so everything just gets chucked in together if at all possible!

Ended up having it at the last minute for dinner yesterday and it turned out great - mixed it up a little by popping the beans into a casserole dish, layered on some corned beef then topped it off with mashed potato. Comfort food=yum!

[kyrielle]

I didn't keep eating out to zero, but I kept it near zero and we have lots of stuff ready-made in the freezer to keep us from eating out because we have no energy for weeknight cooking. And the taxes are done, which is always good.

I am also curious about the lamb....

[jamethiel]

Is lamb something you eat a lot? A friend pointed out that it's a really english/Australian dish. It's something that my brother in New York really misses! (we made him cry at Easter by serving roast lamb)

I've typed out the recipe for the lamb above

[kyrielle]

That...baffles me. Lamb is not something I eat a lot but it is something I eat regularly - it was a treat, growing up, to get a garlic leg of lamb. (And my mother always turned the leftovers into a spicy curry, which I sulked about. She kept some slices back for me but I always wanted more for me and less curry. LOL.) And I adore Moroccan and similar flavors, so...yum!

[exhausted_pigeon]

Well, to be honest, I haven't done so well - I had a friend out from England for the week so we had coffee a few times, had a couple of days of can't be fucked and just bought lunch which blew my 'food not at home' budget and then was at a wedding which necessitated Emergency KFC (I couldn't do actual emergency chicken and chips as nowhere was open at 11 am on Good Friday) and then my housemate talked me into pizza. And THEN, today, I was clothes shopping (and yeah, yeah, budgeting but the gov't have just given me $2000 on top of my austudy) and that meant that I totally deserved those dumplings and mango pudding I had for lunch.

So, in other words, I totes haven't been trying very hard but at least part of that was because there were other people around and suddenly, pasta just seemed like a boring plan. :)

[jamethiel]

Eh, it happens. Hey, I want to do a post introducing you. I'll call you in a bit, okay?

[exhausted_pigeon]

You mean, on the telephone? ;)

cooking to save money

[ex2plore]

went out to lunch at somebody's house today and made some cakes as a present instead of chocolates or flowers. They were embarrassingly pleased & the cost was tiny.....wasn't even a big hassle.

Re: cooking to save money

[exhausted_pigeon]

I did the same thing on Sunday whenI went to my housemate's parents' place for dinner.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that everyone should have a basic go-to cake recipe for times like this - the sort of thing you can put together in your sleep if need be and which is flexible enough that you can make it no matter what ingredients you've got in the cupboard. :)

Re: cooking to save money

[jamethiel]

It's amazing how much things like that are appreciated and the quality is totally comparable! Good on you!

(Whar recipe did you use?)