Pork meatballs

Morrisons have 650g pork mince half price at £1.49 at the moment. One pack has made two family meals worth of meatballs, so 75p per meal. Or 18p per person!!! 

650g pork mince

half a carrot - grated

half a courgette - grated

half an onion - fine chopped

1 clove garlic  - fine grated

pinch herbs

pinch salt and pepper

1 chilli

1 thick slice bread - made into breadcrumbs

Fry the onions and garlic until soft and add grated carrot and courgette and fry until soft.

Meanwhile, add seasoning and breadcrumbs to your pork mince in a bowl.

Add your grated carrot, onion and courgette.

With clean hands, your going to squish and mash the lot into a sausage meat type texture mix.

Roll into meatballs. I tried frying them, but they were catching on the an and breaking up too much. Ive found baking them much more succesful. It also lets any fat/water leak out and leaves very lean meatballs.

You could just throw them into some sauce raw and simmer them. Or freeze them raw. Im not to careful about squishing them into the freezer or fridge so find by pre-cooking them before freezing it stops them from losing their shape, and its so easy to chuck some cooked meatballs into a simmering pot of tomato sauce for an easy lazy meal.  

Clemantine marmalade

I scored a kilo of clemantines for 69p from morrisons a couple of weeks ago. My daughter ate half of them over a few weeks, and 4 went into two clemantine cakes. I still had 6 left, so decided to marmalize them ;)

6 clemantines

1 lemon

1 kilo sugar

1.5 litres hot water

I filled 4 small jars, no clue what size they are though.

Start off by juicing your lemon and setting the juice to one side. Add the lemon rind and whole clemantines to the pan and boil for 2 hrs or so until soft.

Remove and allow to cool. Slice in half and scoop the inside pulp/flesh out, back into the pan of water. Mash thoroughly and boil for 15 mins.

Meanwhile, finely shred the clemantine and lemon rind.

Strain the liquid in a colander/sieve, and push down with a ladle to extract all the juice. 

Add the juice back to the pan with 1 kilo sugar, lemon juice, and the rind and boil.

Meanwhile steralise the jam jars and heat up, I pour boiling water in them, but do it gradually and carefully so they dont shatter from the sudden change in temperature.

When the marmalade has reached setting point, drain the boiling water from the jars and ladle the hot jam in. Sealing tightly.

Mine sealed themselves as the were very hot.

Now the reason there are 5 jars in that pic is because I originally made 5 jars. But although the jars sealed, the marmalade didnt set. So this morning I emptied them back into a pan, re-boiled for half an hour, re-steralised the jars and tried again, this time it has set well. So I had to boil the jam for about an hour and a half in total before it set. I now have 4 jars.

My sourdough starter is looking like this :

this morning, so time to make some sourdough to go with my marmalade :)

Sausage and cider casserole

I had 4 lincolnshire sausages (the herby type) to use up tonight. Usually I do a sausage and bean casserole to go with pasta or a jacket potato. But we have bolognase tomorrow with the leftover half pack of mince, so didnt fancy anything tomatoey.

4 sausages-halved

some cooking bacon -cubed

2 onions - I used 1 red and 1 white- cut into wedges

1 apple - cored and chopped

some cider

bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon herbs

1 cove garlic

seasoning

Quarter onions, add to baking pan, half sausages and add, add cubed bacon, pop in the oven and for half an hour.

After they have browned, remove from pan. Add a tablespoon of flour and whisk into fat/sauce. Then whisk in some cider to make a thin sauce. 

Add a grated garlic clove, bay leaf and herbs, seasoning. Add back onions, sausage and bacon. Add cubed apple and mix. Put back into oven for another half hour.

Served ours with yorkshires, roast potatoes, roast carrots and parsnips.

Kids wolfed it down too! After nicking half my yorkshires behind my back while I was cooking. 

Home-made yogurt, take 2.

Obviously I cannot afford to buy organic everything. But I have realised I can afford organic milk now. My usual milk was £1 for 4 pints. At asda, 2x 4 pint bottles of organic milk are £3. So £1.50 per 4 pints, an extra £1 ontop of my shopping bill weekly, but i'm willing to pay that for the lack of hormones and anti-biotics. Its only a small change but its an affordable one and a sensible one for us. 

My favourite yogurt is any organic Yeo valley! But particularly the green one, its so creamy and gorgeous. It is also £1.79 per pot. And both my daughter and me could eat it in 1 sitting, so completely un-affordable.

Ive tried making my own yogurt before and it has always come out somewhat runny unless strained, but acceptable enough for the kids to wolf down. Since im paying an extra £1 week on milk i'm looking at making that up in other ways, one of my regular shopping staples was plain yogurt, we mix in fruit and nuts. I usually buy the big tubs (about 2 pints worth) from Lidl for £1.50, since i'm buying organic milk I decided to use some of it to try and make my own organic yogurt. So I have found a new method to make it in a slow cooker that is both lazier and it comes out thicker.

result!

I used a whole 4 pints of milk to make 4 pints of whole milk organic yogurt for £1.50. Which is cheaper than the value yogurt and organic to boot. Cant beat that.

Since this is the first time making a new batch I had to fork out an extra 50p for a starter culture, which was a little pot of yeo valley organic yogurt for me. Full of probiotic cultures.

So the method I used this time is simple:

Tip 4 pints of milk into your slow cooker, switch is on low for 2 1/2 hrs. 

Then switch off and leave for 3 1/2 hrs until warm, it should be warm on your little finger but hot will kill the bacteria. Lukewarm and it wont stay warm enough for the bacteria to culture the milk.

Whisk in your starter yogurt. Cover, and wrap in 2 thick bath towels to maintain the temperate.

Leave for 8 hrs.

Thats it.

:) simples.

I put the yogurt back into the milk container and into the fridge. Remember to keep a little to start off a new batch and you wont have to buy another starter. £1.50 - 4 pints of organic yogurt for not much effort or washing up at all. If you used standard milk then its just £1 for 4 pints of yogurt. 

Veggie meatballs/burgers/falafel type thingies

Ive been having a go at sprouting chickpeas and lentils.

Theory has it, it makes the nutrients more bio-available for your digestive system and neutralise's the anti-nutrients and phytic acid. Making them more nutritious, for the price of a bit of tap water.

Nice one!

I tend to cook with half lentils and half meat, but this week I have been experimenting with some veggie/vegan recipes using my sprouted legumes.

Obviously burgers would go in a bun/pitta with sauce, or with potato wedges etc. The non-meat-balls and falafel type ones i used to top soup, top spaghetti, rice etc. You can be pretty inventive with them and the flavours are much more diverse.

The recipes I used are in need of some tweaking but the general rule of thumb is pretty standard. Grate some veg, i used carrot, courgette and onion. Fry them to soften. I put lots of garlic in the burgers and chillis in the falafels. Any spices you want, I used lots of ground cumin and some chopped fresh coriander from the freezer. Also put spinach in the falafels.

You need a base of mashed beans/legumes. Sprouted mine and boiled them until soft. Mash them up with a tbsp of flour to bind, and mix in the softened veg.

oh yeah that reminds me, i picked up a packet of linseeds, 49p for a kilo and they contain more omega 3 per gram than fish! So ive been sneaking them in things ;)

I baked the burgers and wasnt very happy with the texture. But I fried the falafels and they came out much better. Also rolled them in flour before frying which seemed to help aswell.

Will get back to you when i've worked out some recipes.

Spinach, Feta and walnut parcels

My local Lidl has started selling 500g blocks of puff pastry for 59p :) Lots of recipes coming using this, this week I made these little pastries.

half a tub of soft cheese - 24p

handful of spinach - 10p? or so

handful walnuts- 30p

half block feta - 49p

500g block puff pastry -59p

£1.75 made, 8 - 22p per parcel

I wanted to make little samosa type triangles but had to hurry with these so just made rectangles.

Just roll out your pastry onto a floured surface, cut into 8 pieces. Spread with soft cheese, cut up spinach leaves and put in middle, sprinkle walnuts and cubed feta. Fold over, crimp the edges and bake for 20 mins or so. 

Our dinner tonight was a bacon and brie risotto, that ended up with all sorts in it! courgette, peas, bacon, brie, parmasen, plenty of onion and garlic :)

I got a cracking pack of cooking bacon from Lidl last week (yes MORE cooking bacon even though the freezer is full of it!) I couldnt pass it up because i was a pack of steaks! Zero rind/fat/waste.

Side of chantey carrots and green beans. Plenty for dinner and an extra 2 portions for a friend.

A gift from Barb....

Look!!! A whole organically grown Pumpkin gifted to us :) Thanks Barb!

No recpies yet i'm making space in the freezer for pumpkin puree. Ive got a Thai coconut and pumpkin soup planned, a pumpkin and bacon soup, maybe a pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread/muffins. Watch this space :) Xx

Butter-less bacon and cheese scones

I usually make these with cooking bacon fried till crispy. Im still using up that same pack of smoked ham! So I used that. Just cut it into strips, didnt bother frying it. But you could, if you wanted extra work and washing up ;)

These use vegetable oil, I came up with this because I had run out of both butter and margarine.

Cooked bacon/smoked ham

2 cups flour (I used self-raising)

3 tsp baking powder

salt

cayenne pepper

1 cup strong cheese

3 tsp veg oil

125ml milk

1 egg

Stick all the dry ingredients plus cheese and ham in the bowl and mix. In a jug whisk together milk, egg and oil. Then add the liquid to the dry mix and combine (I used the K beater on my kenwood because I was feeling very lazy). I dont have a scone cutter, so just rolled into shape with my hands and put onto a greased baking tray. Yummy! Munchies for the rest of the week! :) Or rest of the day the way the kids are munching today.

Aaaaaaaand, I STILL have half the pack of the smoked ham left!! 

I have 4 sausages that need using up tonight so making a small toad in the hole with mash and the last of the savoy cabbage. Tomorrow i'm going to be using the remaining half pack of smoked ham to make brie and bacon risotto.

Macaroni cheese my style.....

Meaning 'stuff whatevers in the fridge in there'.

Today I had smoked ham (still on the same pack!) petit pois and sweetcorn from freezer.

I used wholewheat pasta because I stocked up on it! I found some for about 40p kilo which is as cheap as the value white pasta. Wholewheat obviously has extra fibre and nutrients in it, so it made sense to snap it up. This is penne pasta, I call it macaroni cheese its probably technically a pasta bake.

Wholewheat penne pasta

Lidls half price smoked ham - 4 rashers

Frozen sweetcorn

Frozen petit pois

Cheese (i used a mix of parmasen and cheddar)

Breadcrumbs (I keep a bag in freezer from leftover bread)

While the pasta is par boiling (about 5 mins rolling boil for wholewheat)

Chop smoked ham into strips

Ive made this with little cubes of cooking bacon too and it works really well also.

I used a cheese sauce mix, cheating I know. But it was 99p and makes 8 litres of cheese sauce. Thats a hell of a lot cheaper than using the milk/butter/cheese to make my own, and also its a lot, lot, lot, lot easier and quicker! Which is importaint with 2 little ones running around.

One day I will do a tutorial/recipe for home-made white/cheese sauce, but not today.

When the pasta is par boiled, drain and stir through cheese sauce

See how much pasta there is in the dish there. Now, add all your sneaky bits, frozen peas

 and sweetcorn and sliced ham/bacon.

See how much more there is! Full of goodness, if its covered in cheese sauce, theyll eat it.

Mix up your cheese and breadcrumbs

And top the dish with it

Bake for about 30 mins or so.

Tadah!

I was going to serve this with green beans to get an extra portion of veg in. But little girly was too impatient so she wolfed a bowl down on its own. Literally! There as not a single pea or sweetcorn kernel left in the bowl, licked clean. Ive used 1/4 of this dish, the remainder will be frozen for quick lunchs/dinner to nuke in the microwave.