I made me some ghee!!

Mum picked up a 4 pint of whipping cream for me reduced to 94p! :) 

I wanted to make some butter, but unfortunately my kenwood decided to be stupid. It is old, 3 generations old and I think the coating on the metal whisk is starting to come off. It left little grey flecks of metal through my butter, and I was gutted! :(

I didnt dare serve it to my family (heavy metal poisoning anyone?!) and couldnt get all the flecks out no matter how much I tried. So I decided to try clarifying the butter into ghee, in the hope that when the milk solids floated up so would the metal flecks. And whatcha know?! it worked!! :)

Basically you pour the cream into the bowl and whisk until it separates into butter and buttermilk. 

Then heat the butter to a simmer and the milk solids will float to the top in a white scum that you skim off the top. The process took about an hour! Longer than I thought and was a faff, but it saved my butter :) 

Of course if my kenwood hadnt been stupid I wouldve left it as butter saving a lot of time and effort and washing up, but there ya go!

Our lamb biriyani. Fried in said ghee. Well the onions and veg anyway, the rice and lamb had enough oil with the curry paste to fry. 

Naan and chutney from approved food. I think the jar of chutney was 20p and did 3 meals. for the sake of argument lets say weve used 10p of chutney, and the pack of naan breads 25p. So total 35p for the extras.

The biriyani is difficult to price up. The lamb was from a leg I bought in spring when they were £4 kilo. I used about 300g of lamb so about £1.30 ish? If i'd had my wits about me, there was enough lamb I couldve stretched it 2 meals with a biriyani tonight and the rest with cous cous tomorrow. But builders had been in all morning and then my 2 year old threw up on me. So I was just glad to get dinner done!

Tikka pasta (20p jar), half a jar 10p

2 peppers - 46p (pack 3 for 69p)

Mushrooms (half a 50p pack I sliced and froze) - 25p

Onion, goodness knows! was a 5 kilo bag for £1.99. 5p??

4 cloves garlic - call it 5p?

Ghee not even 1p, used 1 tsp and it was 95p for 700ml

Total for biriyani - about £2.20 give or take, feeding 4 of us and also a small lunch portion for hubby to take to work, makes it about 50p portion, plus less than 10p each for extras.

It is quite carb-tastic, only 1 portion of veg each in this meal I usually squeeze more in. But plenty of protein from mushrooms (also selenuim and B-12 vitamins, one of the few foods that actually give vitamin D too), lamb and I might add some cashew nuts for an extra bit. Peppers are brilliant for vitamin C and vitamin A. Infact 100g provides 404% of a persons vitamin C RDA I think, if I have my facts right, which I probably dont. Lamb being red meat is good for iron. Fresh garlic and ginger good for anti oxidents. All in all could do worse. Financially and nutritionally.

Beans soaking for my double batch sausage casserole tomorrow. I would normally do 4 sausages between us, sooooo much protein from the beans theyre not really needed (but taste so good!) but im trying to fill the freezer with meals to defrost when im ill. So cooking double and one batch will be frozen. There is a mix of haricot beans, chickpeas and aduki beans here. A glass of red wine was left out last night accidently so that will go in the casserole (makes it so deep and rich in flavour.) And served with wholewheat pasta and cheese. Im sticking it all in the slow cooker in the morning.

Last but not least, I have it on semi-reliable authority that next weeks super 6 at Aldi will be:

Fun size apples

Fun size pears

Plums

Pineapple

Chestnut mushrooms

Salad potatoes

All priced at 69p

69p is pretty decent for pineapple! Might have to get one of them. I have salad potatoes to use up from when they were 39p so will pass on those. The mushrooms are still expensive but so lovely! Really nutty taste to them, nicer than standard mushrooms. Apples, Pears and Plums are not exactly a fantastic price but low enough to get a pack of each for kids munchies. If i leave the plums out to be eaten first as they go soft quicker. Pears and apples will go in fridge for later in the week/month, it stops them ripening faster than they can get eaten. Then pears will go out, they ripen fast once at room temperature. Apples ive had for over a month in the fridge and they've been perfectly fine. So should get at least 2-3 weeks of fruit from a pack each. Then again now ive said that ive probably jinxed it and my daughter will go on a fruit binge.