Onion Bhajis

Yummy, scrummy and so easy (and cheap) to make.

I didn't have any gram flour (not so easy to find in a little town like ours) so I substituted for plain. Anyway, here's what I did:

Ingredients:
plain flour
chilli powder
turmeric
ground coriander
ground cumin
ground ginger
black pepper
salt
pinch of baking powder
1 large spanish onion, chopped
water
vegetable oil for frying

Method:
1. using approx 1/2 - 1tsp of all each of the spices and seasonings, add everything to a bowl except for the flour and water.
2. stir to coat the onions, then add approx 4 tbs flour
3. add small amounts of water gradually until you have a thick, sticky batter.  If it gets too wet, just add more flour - that's the great thing about this recipe, it's almost impossible to get wrong.
4. heat some oil in a pan (about 3 inches or so deep) and fry dollops of the mixture until golden on all sides.

Serve! (I served with some yoghurt and mint)

For our main, we had a quick potato and pea curry with boiled basmati rice.

Food Challenge - FAIL

Ok, so I knew from the outset that this challenge was nigh on impossible, but nevertheless, I am still disappointed to have failed.  Mostly because I know that with more prep and less emotional buying, I could have actually done it.  But various events and factors collided to make it just too tough.  I had unexpected guests, went shopping on the busiest day of the week (saturday) at the busiest time which was also the time when I should have been preparing that evening's meal, and on an empty stomach with a baby in tow who, although very quiet and happy enough, I was aware would need feeding and changing real soon.  Then came half-term holidays and I had even more unexpected (though very welcome) guests......I cannot have people in my house and not feed them.  I am a feeder I admit it!  So the food challeneg has filed.  But I have learned some very valuable lessons.  Here they are, not in any particular order...:

1. When I stuck to the budget, by the end of the week the cupboards and the fridge were bare.  But no-one had gone hungry and very little food was wasted.  When I went over budget, food was wasted and I still had food in the fridge at the end of the week that I then needed to find ways to use up without us getting too bored of eating the same things over and over.
2. £100 is too low a budget.  In order to make it succeed, you would actually need to do a 'store cupboard' shop probably once a quarter (or more often if you don't have the storage capacity) I found that I went over budget when I completely ran out of items such as olive oil (ok, I could have just used vegetable, but I just can't bear to cook certain cuisines without it!), flour, butter, sugar, tea bags....basically your basic grocery items.
3. The more food I had as a result of going over budget, the less organised I was in terms of menu planning and the less inspiration I had - hence the waste.

Overall though, despite the overspend, my shopping bill was approximately HALF what it normally is - even with the guests and holiday.  I'm therefore going to take the lessons I learned and try to be more organised with meal planning and when I go shopping, in order to keep my food shopping expense lower.  Why? Well, because this month I got to splash out on some really cool retro lunch tins for the kids, a cabinet from IKEA, and a few lunch dates (once I'd already blown the budget mind), not to mention hair cuts, cinema and Macdonalds trips for the kids and some beautiful baby clothes - all stuff I normally don't do too often because my food bill eats into my budget!

chicken, vegetable and rice noodle soup

This was basically a meal I made by winging it - but it was actually really tasty, and healthy to boot.  Also it's very cheap as I used only one chicken breast (on the bone) that I'd saved from a whole chicken I'd cut up.  I was pleased to see Ken Hom on This Morning talking about how chinese food is healthy because they use such little meat in comparison to the typical western diet.  Well I'm certainly sold on this concept and regularly use as little as one chicken breast to make a dish that feeds all 4 of us comfortably.

Anyway, I digress, here's roughly what I did:

Ingredients:
spring greens
1 chicken breast on the bone
chopped fresh mint and coriander
thumb sized piece of ginger
2 large cloves of garlic
a couple of carrots
a broccoli stalk (no waste on this challenge!)
pinch of 5 spice powder
soy sauce
salt

Method:

1. simmer the chicken breast in water with some salt until just cooked
2. meanwhile shred the spring greens, trim and thinly slice the carrot, ginger, garlic cloves and broccoli stalk
3. remove the chicken and shred the meat from the bone and reserve
4. add the sliced vegetables to the stock and continue to simmer, meanwhile heat some oil in a pan and fry the shredded chicken with a good pinch of 5 spice powder and soy sauce.
5. add the rice noodles to the stock and vegetables, then add the fresh herbs (in my case I had previously chopped and frozen them, but it makes no difference) and a good glug of soy sauce
6. ladle the soup and noodles into a bowl and top with some chicken
7. serve!

NB. If I wasn't also cooking for the children I would have also added some fresh, sliced chillies.....

Choc chip banana loaf

I used this recipe, but added a few drops of vanilla essence, some ground cinnamon and approx 50g of dark chocolate that I chopped up..... oh, and because my bananas weren't overripe, when I mashed them I added a pinch of salt and a large pinch of soft brown sugar.

Yum!

Food challenge : Week 2

This week has been tough.  Firstly we were away in London celebrating the Chinese New Year over the weekend so I neither menu planned for the coming week, nor had time to shop beforehand.
So on monday i had to think on my feet and just go shopping.  I had no real menu in mind, I just had an idea of what meat/fish was left in the freezer and what staples we usually need.

I also had no computer so couldn't do all the fancy meal charts and shopping lists that I did last week.

I ALSO had a special request as Jasmine's friend came home with us after school on tuesday so Spaghetti bolognese had to be on the menu.

And finally Jasmine caught a sickness bug and is, as of the time of writing, still weak and not eating much of anything.  So each day I have just been winging the meals from what I managed to buy on monday and what is already in the freezer/cupboards.

I can't remember everything I bought and I lost the itemised part of the receipt from Lidl, but I know I bought spaghetti, milk, 20 eggs, butter, natural yoghurt, some of their cheapest teabags (uuurrrrggghhh, 'dust' comes to mind - but they were on 27p so I don't mind sticking them straight on the compost!), garlic, cucumber and a large tin of rice pudding.  I spent £6.49

In Sainsburys I bought:
crunchy raisin and oat cereal - £1.55
anya potatoes - reduced to - 50p
basics carrots (1kg) - 50p
broccoli - 48p
Spring greens - 98p
Bananas - £1.19
a couple of mushrooms (only I eat them!) - 26p
Almond flakes - 70p

And the menu so far this week has been:

Monday - stir fried greens, carrots and broccoli in oyster sauce with toasted almond flakes and egg fried rice
Tuesday - Spaghetti bolognese, followed by homebaked choc chip and banana loaf (pics and recipe to follow)
Wednesday - Asian style soup with rice noodles and chicken (pics and recipe to follow)
Tonight* - Tuna and rice for me, nothing for Jasmine (still too sick), scrambled eggs and rice for Ben (he doesn't like tuna) and nothing for Nick (he's out)

*disclaimer: I normally don't cook different things for different people but today is an exception because It's only me and Ben actually eating and I am low on options that he will happily eat and too tired to force him to eat tuna tonight!!!


Friday - I have no idea yet, but it will probably be a potato curry with rice, some onion bhaji's (though I'll have to substitute the gram flour as it is not budget friendly right now) and a cucumber and mint raita

Breakfasts have mainly been the usual cereal/toast/boiled eggs/fruit and yoghurt combos, whilst lunches have been instant noodles/leftover rice fried with veg and egg/sandwiches and fruit.  Basically whatever is in the fridge/cupboard.  Snacks have been fruit/toast/cake that I baked

Hopefully next week I'll have more time to do the proper charts and stuff to make all this more legible.

Total spend so far: £62.61 leaving me a total of £37.39 for two more weeks, including half term (when things will get really tough with two hungry active kids at home at lot to eat, eat, eat!)

Cake.....in a microwave?!

I kid you not....and it was surprisingly delicious.  I just googled for a recipe - there are loads.

Brussel sprout and potato gratin

I needed to find a way to use up the bag of brussel sprouts that I got from the reduced section in sainsburys, in a way that would make them palatable to a family that, quite frankly, has no real love for brussel sprouts.  And, apart from Ben who doesn't like 'bakes' of any sort because they invariably have creamy sauces and are topped with cheese, it was a big success!

I basically just sliced the sprouts, grated about 4 medium potatoes, minced a couple of cloves of garlic, finely sliced a medium onion, then mixed it all up in a large baking dish, seasoned it with salt pepper and some rosemary from the garden poured in a small tub of cream, topped up with a little stock (made from a cube) and dotted a little butter on top.  After baking in the oven under foil for about 1 hour or so, I removed the foil, grated some cheese on top and finished cooking it until the cheese was all brown and bubbly. Yum!

what I really like is that you could use pretty much any vegetable and potato combinations for equally delicious results.  Maybe potato and courgette, or the obvious potato and leek....or add some bacon to it.....mmmm

Food challenge week 1 Analysis

Hmmmm, well things kinda went well and they kinda didn't.  Firstly, I veered off menu (as mostly happens when I menu plan anyway), but didn't buy anything extra, just used my ingredients in a different way.  We didn't have the chicken puff pie, but an aubergine curry with some of the leftover roast chicken thrown in instead.  And instead of chilli with sweet potato, we had it with rice.  The other issue, was that I ran out of bread and milk halfway through the week.  Cue a trip to the local tesco.  I then also ran out of butter and all types of oil!!!  I was going to top up on all of that just before the challenge, but that felt a bit like cheating so I didn't.  I managed to make everything last until the penultimate day, then had to use nothing when I made the chilli, other than the last scrapings of butter from the dish.  Adding to all that I commited a minor misdemeanor and bought us some of those big fat chewy white choc chip cookies you get from the supermarket.  Kerching, another £1 added to the spend

So, the total spend after the first week, including extras, was 48.54 leaving me £51.46 for the rest of the month......