Because I eat stuff ‘because it was there and needed to be used up’ I’ve tried to get organised about what we are going to eat for the coming week and buy accordingly. My goodness, it’s a time consuming exercise.
When I was a child I always knew what was going to be for dinner by what day of the week it was. We had steak and chips, with mushrooms and tomatoes from the market, on Saturdays. We always had a roast on Sundays. On Wednesdays mum would make a pie. You get the picture.
Dad hated this. He told me he’d like to come home and wonder what he was going to have for tea. I thought that maybe mum would like to wonder that as well, and not have to cook it herself, but I didn’t say so. To be fair, some years later dad did start to do our weekend lunches. Nothing spectacular, but he did like to experiment. His bacon puddings were wonderful and the first sweet and sour I ever had was made by dad.
When my children were very small we used to go to a social group at the local church hall on Tuesday afternoons. I would prepare a casserole and put it in the oven before we went. When we arrived home dinner would be ready and the flat would smell wonderful and welcoming – it was especially great in the winter. On Sundays I would make the traditional Sunday roast.
But for the rest of the week I liked to mix it up a bit. I’d buy whatever was on special offer, or whatever I could afford (I was very short of money when my children were small) but always made sure that I cooked ‘proper’ food with fresh vegetables and protein.
In the 1980s I started to buy a partwork called Nice ‘n’ Easy Cookbook and I would aim to try a new recipe each week. Each part had sections called Midweek Specials, Suppers & Snacks, Vegetable Variety, Sweet Delights, Home Baking, World of Cooking (food from different parts of the world), Entertaining Ideas (themed menus) and Kitchen Basics on the back page which gave information about ingredients or a skill or technique.
(a quick Google shows that the entire set now sells for £124 or individual parts for between £1.20 and £2.70. The index is £3.60)
For the past year I have had both Good Food Magazine and Olive (both BBC publications) delivered each month. I bought a subscription to each at the Good Food Show last year, getting both a discount and a free gift. There are some good recipes (and good articles) in both and I think, for 2008 I shall aim to cook one recipe from the relevant month from the 2007 issues.
I also need to work through my recipe book collection. This is just a few:
Because we go to water aerobics straight from work on Fridays I try to ensure there is something ready to eat – a stew or casserole – when we get home. It stops us getting a take-away.
So Friday night is crock pot night and I can try lots of recipes for that. beef and apricot tagine is a current favourite.
I have a lot of minced beef (it’s delicious Dexter beef) in the freezer as I recently bought another quarter of a Dexter from Steve Rawlings. Obvious choices are cottage pie and spaghetti bolognaise but I want to try some different mince recipes too.
I try to do a stir fry at least once a fortnight as it uses a good mix of veggies. So many possibilities there.
If dinner can produce extras for lunch boxes that’s great too. You’ll see the results of all this cooking over in my other blog, Journal of a Photo-dieter.
