{{{SIGH}}}

Tuesday was a mixed bag type of day.

Had the appliance repair guy come again to install another circuit board in the fridge.  When hubby got up at 4:30 am the fridge wasn't working and felt a bit warm he said.  How long it had been off for, who knows.  Nothing was spoiled though.  So I guess we have another 90 days to see if it's going to work this time round?  It really is a pain in the butt though not knowing if or when the fridge might stop working?

Now I did make my fish cakes.  Ended up using three cans of salmon with the mashed potatoes.  Made enough for three meals.  Popped two meals in the freezer.  All in all took me around 90 minutes, and that included washing up and tidying the kitchen.  I also used up some crusts of bread to make my bread crumbs.  I never throw them out, I just stick them in my freezer.

I also made a quick 500 piece puzzle.  Took me just a couple of hours over a couple of days.

I got this one from the dollar store for $5....nothing is ever just a dollar at the dollar store nowadays.

Here is a photo of the Thomas Kinkade one I finished as well.

Back when I was working

outside of the house, Sunday's used to be when I cooked meals for the upcoming week.  Haven't thought about that in a while.  It made life easier for when I came in from work. 

On Sunday I prepped a few things to take us through the week.  From left to right.  Apple and strawberry sauce, garden salad, potato salad, boiled eggs and couscous and chickpea salad.

I did a rough puree of the apples and strawberries, I like a chunky sauce, we will have that in individual bowls with a tub of yogurt on the top.  I made enough of the potato and couscous salad, so hubby could take it in his lunch bag for work.  

I went to Costco on Monday as hubby really liked this bagged salad I got last week.  I was shocked as it's Dill Pickle flavour, not something he normally likes.  However for $7.99 for two bags, I thought it was yummy and great value for money.

They also had cans of salmon on for $13.99 for the six cans which is a super price.  I am going to make a big batch of fish cakes to put in the freezer.  I got a 10lb bag of potatoes in my produce bag the other week, so need to use them up.

Canned salmon is not something I buy normally, but I do like it in fish cakes.  I remember when I was a child, we would go to my aunt's house and she always made canned salmon sandwiches.  She used to mix the salmon up with salt and vinegar.  My mam never normally made them, but her sister always did.

Do you use canned salmon, and if so what do you make with it?

Busy day yesterday.........batch cooking

Cooked for both our daughter and family, and ourselves.

Rotten photos, but at least you get the idea.

Took me all day to do it.  I started before 8 am and finished tidying up by just after 3 pm.  Now it wouldn't have taken as long if folk didn't keep calling me......you know who you are...LOL  I didn't have to pick the phone up I know, but I love talking to the folk that called.

For Daughter and family I made:

2 meals chicken pot pies
1 meal sausage and bean casserole
1 meal fish cakes
1 meal shepherds pie
2 bags mashed potatoes
2 bags mashed carrot and turnip/rutabaga
1 portion of sweet potato veggie fritters

For us:

1 meals chicken pot pies
1 meal sausage and bean casserole
1 meal fish cakes
1 meal shepherds pie
1 potion of mashed carrot and turnip/rutabaga
1 portion of sweet potato veggie fritters
1 bag of cooked chicken

All the meals I made are my own recipes, so just make them up as I go along. There is a link to a fish cake recipe though.

Lot of work, but well worth it, as I do want to make a start on priming the basement next week and the ready meals will come in handy.

Do you like batch cooking and if so what are your go too meals?  Also do you tidy up as you go along, or tidy up when you have finished cooking?  I am a tidy up as you go along type of gal.

Busy week ahead of us..........

Our daughter will be having her baby girl......finally!!!

Going to spend Tuesday doing a big batch cook for both ourselves and our daughter and family.  She found having meals on hand, just waiting to be heated up after having Our Little Munchkin was the best thing.

Having a wheat free diet seems to be the latest thing out there.  I thought this looked interesting and have signed up.

My pot of knitted hexagons is getting fuller and brighter!

Made this elephant for Our Little Princess:

 Haven't seen Our Little Princess and family for a couple of weeks, need to fit in a visit with them sometime.

Then The Lakeside Yarn Crawl starts on June 18th.

You can read more about that here.

Be back later in the week.

Bit of everything weather wise..........

Snow, sleet, rain, a tiny bit of sun, we had it all today.  Bitter cold, thankfully dh was working otherwise I would have heard a bit of whining about how cold it was and would have had to turn the heating on.  I decided to have a cooking session.

In the slow cooker were some chicken thighs and barbecue sauce to make pulled chicken rolls.  

Homemade sausage rolls, added the green tops from salad/spring onions and apple to the sausage meat for added flavour.

Had a couple of boiled eggs in the fridge, so covered them in sausage meat and breadcrumbs for Scotch Eggs.  

You can't see them but made salmon fishcakes as well.  Had some crusts from a loaf of bread so used them for the breadcrumbs.

I made enough potatoes to have a meal of leftover mashed potatoes.  I added some garlic powder and feta cheese and will have that as a side with one of our meals this week.

The muffin's look a little "dark" but it's just the way they photographed.  I made a batch of banana pineapple bread, but made them into muffins.  The recipe for them is here.

So double duty today, warmed the house without putting the heating on and meals planned for the next few days.

All it took was 2 hours.........

and I made enough meals to last us all week:

I made a cheese, onion and mushroom quiche, some baked potatoes, two shepherd's pie and a bean lasagna. 

I had a lot of mushrooms, and a few onions that needed to be used up, along with a lump of Harvati Cheese, so all that was saying made me into a quiche.  Of course put potatoes onto bake at the same time.

The Bean Lasagna recipe is from here.  The recipe says it feeds 12, I think more realistically 6.   Here is a Iink to the Pulse Pledge Site with more recipes on it. I took out a pound of ground beef (mince) and used half a pound for that recipe.  With the rest I used it to make two meals of shepherd's pies by bulking it up with veggies and we will also have pickled beets with them.  I love pickled beets with shepherd's pie.

So our menu plan this week will consist of:

Quiche with baked potatoes and ceaser salad.
Quiche with fries and baked beans
Shepherd's pie with pickled beets x 2
Bean Lasagna with garlic bread probably twice and I'll freeze one meal for next week.

I am quite proud of myself for actually doing a menu plan and a batch cook all in one day!!!  That is really good for me, as I do not like menu planning for some reason. 

You may have noticed there are only six meals there, I want to see what I have in leftovers and make a meal out of them later in the week.

Did you menu plan this week?  Also I have a big bag of cornmeal.  I need some ideas on what to do with it?

I am a rotten blogger at the moment..........

however in all fairness I have been busy.

On Saturday we went up to Barrie where gas/petrol prices were below the dollar mark per litre.  Been a long time since we have seen that:

Called in at the garden centre and had a wander around and among all the photos I took, I took this one:

Called in at the DIY store and bought wood to start finishing off the basement and then came home.  We then headed out to the airport to pick up son and daughter-in-law; as they had been in Rome, Italy for the week on vacation.  They had a super time and walked 73 kilometres while there.

Their flight along with a "hundred" other's all landed at the same time.  They were held back twice when walking to customs as there were that many people trying to get through.  We had a good time waiting as it's always interesting people watching and seeing what other people were up too.  

On Sunday I was up bright and early as I was a woman on a mission:

 Yes the deck was to seal.  I got all the flat surfaces, the stairs and some of the railings done.

I can only do so much at once as it kills my hands.  It looks so much better though.  I hope to finish it off either Thursday or Friday depending on the weather this week.

Monday was also a busy day.  One thing I did decide to do was a batch cook.

I got a baked bean lasagna made, shepherd's pie for both of us for one night and dh for Sunday night; I am out.  Then two meals of scotch eggs.  I had hoped to stretch the ground beef/mince to include pasta sauce but there just wasn't enough meat.

In between all of this I have been knitting.  I have five gnomes completely finished.  Two gnomes knit that just need to be sewn up and stuffed and am starting another one.  I am hoping to get them ll done by the beginning of next week.

So what did I do on Monday?

As I am feeling a lot better, I decided to get some jobs done around the house.  Started off with cleaning the bathrooms, which is a typical Monday and Friday morning job.  Threw in a load of laundry.  Our laundry room is in our powder room behind two large doors, on the main floor.

I decided to do some cooking and made fishcakes, fish in parsley sauce with peas and, cauliflower and cheese sauce.  There was enough fish cakes for one meal for Monday nights supper and one meal to put in the freezer:

Prepared some fruit to put into dh's lunches and for our dessert:

Made out our menu plan.  I see I spelled parsley wrong on the menu, just couldn't be bothered to take another photo.

I posted three book reviews here of the books below in the photo.

Along with tidying up parts of the house along the way, by the time I got to the book reviews I was getting tired.  So after posting the book reviews I didn't do much.  There's always tomorrow.

Did you have a busy Monday?

All it took was an hour and a half.........

And I have three meals and part of another meal all ready to go.

I made two chicken "pies," which consists of three chicken breasts chopped up with an onion and mushrooms chopped and sauted.  Make some gravy and add to the chicken and simmer.  I had some leftover frozen mixed veg that needed using up, so added that and divided it between the two dishes.  I could have only used two chicken breasts as they were quite large.

The egg pie consists of hard boiled eggs halved, and topped with cheese sauce, recipe here.

I made a big pan of mashed potatoes and a packet of stuffing mix.  I placed half the prepared stuffing mixture on top of the chicken and veggies and filled in both sides with mashed potatoes and did the same with the other one.  I topped the egg pie also with mashed potatoes, and had a bowl of mashed potatoes leftover.

As everything is cooked, all you need to is pop it in the microwave to heat through, or pop into a 350 oF oven until heated through.

I pulled out a couple of chicken breasts only to discover they were ones I had stuffed with cheese and broccoli, so Wednesday's meal plan has changed from chicken strips and salad, to stuffed chicken breasts with potato pancakes, using the leftover mashed potatoes and probably peas.

It took me around and hour and a half to prepare, cook everything and wash up.

Can't believe it is the end of March, the month has gone by fast, just wish it would heat up a bit.....

Best laid plans and all that..........

I had been muttering on all week that I was going to do a big batch cook and bake on Sunday when the hydro (electricity) is cheaper.  When I got up on Sunday morning, I had as much enthusiasm about doing that as flying to the moon.  However after lunch I did do a mini batch cook of sorts and made some things.

I had picked up a six pack of nice and thick boneless pork chops on clearance for $7.25 and a five pack of boneless skinless chicken breast on clearance for $6.50 at Wal-Mart.  I quite like their meat there and I generally buy from the clearance bin.

With the pork chops I made a pork and bean stew and two packages of bbq pork and onions.

The pork and bean stew consists of two pork chops cut up into cubes and browned off in oil with a sliced onion and a yellow pepper sliced.  To that I added four small diced up potatoes, a couple tablespoons of tomato puree and a can of baked beans in tomato sauce.  To season it I added salt and pepper and an OXO cube.  Cooked it over a simmer heat for around half an hour until the potatoes are cooked through.  

The bbq pork chops and onion, is basically an onion sliced and popped into a plastic bag with the pork chops and some bbq sauce.  To cook them I will pop them in a dish and cook in my toaster oven for half an hour at around 350 oF until cooked through.

With the five chicken breasts I made a chicken, mushroom and onion pasta sauce and a chicken pot pie using two of the chicken breasts.  I had three chicken breasts left over which I individually wrapped in cling wrap and popped into a bag and put into the freezer

I cut two chicken breasts into pieces and browned them off in a pan with two finely diced onions and half a pound of mushrooms chopped up until nice and soft.  In another pan I made a white sauce using 1/4 cup of marg, melted.  I added 1/4 cup of flour and whisked it together, along with a teaspoon of minced garlic.  I whisked in two cups of half and half, but you could use single cream and or milk.  I had probably 1/4 cup of Parmesan which I added in along with salt and pepper.

I added the chicken, mushroom and onion mixture to the sauce and then divided into two.

For the chicken pasta sauce, I added some frozen peas and it will be put over pasta or rice.  If it is too thick I will water it down with some milk.  There will be enough for the two of us for a meal and probably a lunch.

For the chicken pot pie I added a couple of diced cooked potatoes and some frozen mixed veggies.  I will add a sheet of puff pastry and bake in the oven at 425 oF for around 25 minutes......but will check it after 20 minutes.  

I closed out the month of February grocery totals yesterday and my figures were the following.

Total Spent: $310.45

Total Saved: $88.03

I am beginning to see that trying to keep my budget under $300 a month is getting harder and harder to do.

Now I do include all food, toiletries, over the counter medications, and all cleaning products in my monthly totals.  I think I will keep all receipts for the month of March and see what I buy over the month.  I really do need to plan a week's menu at a time.  I also need to be more focused with this.

I "think" this week's menu will be as follows:

Sunday: BBQ Pork chops, potato salad and salad
Monday: Chicken Pot Pie
Tuesday: Chicken with pasta or rice
Wednesday: Pork Stew
Thursday: Mac and Cheese with garlic bread
Friday: Spaghetti Bolognese
Saturday: Chicken burgers and salad

Now the chances of me sticking to this menu is slim to nil but I will try to do it!!

Do you do a menu plan and does it help with your grocery budget

(I am planning on popping some cake/cookies in the oven when I am cooking the chicken pot pie on Monday)

The Lazy Cook..........

I am a lazy cook.  I spend as little time as possible in the kitchen, but I do like to cook.  I tend to go into the kitchen at 4 pm and have dinner on the table by 5 pm.  More often than not, it'll only take me half an hour to cook dinner, which I think is about as long as it should take in my humble opinion.

So due to this "laziness" of mine, I try and do things to cut down on the prep.  If you remember I picked up a club pack of ground beef (mince).  A "club pack" means its a bigger than normal pack, which in this case was just under four pounds of ground beef.  Paid $15.25 for it, as it was "on sale" at $3.99 per pound.  Gone are the days when you could get lean ground beef for under $2 a pound {{SIGH}}

So on Tuesday I decided I had better sort out this pack of ground beef.  I cut up three large onions and browned them along with the ground beef in batches.

I also cooked a large pan of potatoes at the same time.

I ended up with this:

A shepherd's pie, which also used up some mashed carrots and turnip.  Six 8 oz bags of ground beef and onions and one 4 oz bag of ground beef and onions, all ready to pull out of the freezer when needed.  I also have a large tupperware container of mashed potatoes and a bag of mashed potatoes that I am going to put in the freezer.

When we were in Britain I picked up the following:

I used the shepherd's pie mix for the shepherd's pie.  We can probably get all these mixes over here, just wanted to try them and at 1 British Pound for all three they were a good buy I thought.  The 4 oz bag of beef and onion, will be used when I make the Bolognese, as I will "beef" it up with other veggies.  Just having the packages of beef and onion and the mashed potatoes all ready to go will save me time in the kitchen and time wise it probably took less than two hours.  

Would have been less but the mail lady called by with my new Passport............no excuse why I can't fly now!!!  {{{SIGH}}}

By the way feeling much better.

Just popping in.........

to say it cost me $39.25 for all the postage for this years Christmas cards........so far!!  I am hoping it won't be anymore.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon cooking; for both us and dd.

I made dd a sausage risotto, Swedish meatballs and gravy, and a couple of bags of mashed potatoes.  

For us I have two meals of Swedish meatballs and gravy, plus a meatloaf all ready to cook in the freezer.  Two portions of mashed potatoes and three small bags of ground beef and onions all fried up ready to add to a meal.

Today I am making sweet and sour chicken and rice; one meal for us and one meal for dd and son-in-law.  Plus I want to make a carrot cake and get the ingredients together for a Loaded "Baked Potato" Soup for Wednesday's lunch while I am at dd.

I am on making a Sour Dough Starter as well at the moment.  I wanted to see how easy/hard it was to make my own Sour Dough Bread. I am using this recipe.  I am day five of making the starter and won't get chance to make any bread until Thursday at the earliest.  

Do any of you make Sour Dough Bread?  Any Tips if you do?

I am also getting my winter tires put on the car this afternoon and this morning I want to get the bathrooms cleaned and all the attic tidied up.  I got the new basement all sorted out so that's one job off my list.  

I guess I had better get on with it all as it will soon be 2:30 pm when I have to leave the house to go to town to the garage.

Have a good day!

Look who is ten months old already:

She is growing up so fast, and I think she will be walking soon, as she is pretty steady on her feet when walking around furniture and would rather do the bum shuffle than crawl.

It doesn't seem like long since she was looking like this:

Other other little sweetie Nora left hospital last night with a clean bill of health.  Dd levels are still low as she lost a lot of blood, but they are slowly climbing.  Her husband is off until January 4th so he will be taking good care of her while she recovers from her c-section.

I am going down sometime this week to do a batch cook for them so will have more photos then.

Batch cooking........

I will be working for the next two weeks and one thing I do not like doing is coming home from work and having to start on preparing a meal, so on Sunday I spent part of the day doing a batch cook so there would be meals ready for our supper and lunches.

I used two pounds of ground beef, one pound of ground pork and the pastie filling was already made up in the freezer.

From that I made a Baked Bean Lasagna, the recipe is here.  I did change it up slightly by only adding one can of baked beans and adding a can of chopped tomatoes in garlic and onion.  A Shepherd's Pie, two meals of Meat Pasta Sauce and the rest of the ground beef was sauteed with onion, ready to make tacos.  The ground pork was divided between the two pies.  In one there is onion and red pepper chopped and Italian Seasoning.  I also sprinkled a little Parmesan cheese on the top of the pie.  The other was onion and dried sage.  I would have put grated apple in as well but I didn't have any apples.

I made a batch of tomato soup, which we had for our lunch on Sunday and the rest we will both have for our lunches.  There should be left overs from supper that we will be able to take for our lunches.  I put a roast of beef in the crock pot to make Cola Beef which should last us a couple of meals and while I had the oven on I roasted a big tray of potatoes and a tray of cauliflower.  I LOVE roasted cauliflower.  All you do is break up the cauliflower into florets.  Toss them in some olive oil with salt and pepper and some Parmesan cheese and cook at 400 oF for around 30 minutes.  There will be enough veggies for a couple of meals.  The five Yorkshire Cornish Pasties, will do for two meals and I will put the spare one in dh's mini crock pot with some gravy for his lunch one day, along with some bread and butter.

So by my calculations I made at least part or all for 11 separate suppers and there will be leftovers for lunches as well.

Lots of links for everyone in today's post.....

On Sunday I decided to take advantage of it being cheap hydro/electric rates all day and do some cooking.  I needed to do something with the nearly 8 lbs of ground/minced beef I bought on Friday, so thought I'd make some Yorkshire Cornish Pasties.  Cornish Pasties are made with stewing steak, Yorkshire Cornish Pasties are made with ground/minced beef.

Here is the recipe:

Yorkshire Cornish Pasties

8 oz Shortcrust Pastry
8 oz Minced/ground beef
8 oz chopped/diced potato, onion and carrot
1 tsp salt/pepper mix (recipe to follow)

Combine filling ingredients.  Roll out pastry and cut into 6 or 8 inch rounds.  Place filling down the centre of the pastry and dampen the edges with water and bring sides to centre  and pinch together, with fingers and thumb (see photo).  Brush with beaten egg and place on a greased baking tray and bake in a moderately hot oven 400 oF or 200 oC for around 40 minutes.  Lowering the heat if browning too much.  ***The Recipe is a Keeper!!***

Dorothy Sleightholme's Salt and Pepper Mix: For seasoning, mix 3 teaspoons of salt to 1 teaspoon of ground pepper.  Mix well together and keep in screw-top or sprinkler top jar.

I doubled the recipe and I made 9 pasties using a 5 1/2 inch saucer to cut out the pastry circles.  I had a bit of filling left over which I put in a Ziploc bag and froze for another day.  The recipe is from a book I have had for donkey's years called "The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen Cook Book," from Yorkshire Television.  There was a television programme that went along with this book, I found a You Tube Clip here.

I had a little pastry left over so I made some jam tarts in a mini cupcake pan

We had some warm for lunch and then again for supper, with mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli.  The last three I popped into the freezer for another meal.

Also made a batch of choc-chip cookies for dh and at the bottom of the photo is the jam tarts I made.

One of my new to me kitchen finds which I love are these cutting boards.  They are very thin and very flexible and have pictures on them so you can use them just for veggies, meat or fish.  I got them from here and I picked up three sets, as I am giving a set each to two people for Christmas!! (The one on the top is dirty, as I was using it!)

At the end of my cooking session, I had seven 12oz bags of browned and drained ground/minced beef and onions all ready to go in the freezer.  Two more meals of pasties for the freezer; a batch of meat pasta sauce which will do two meals. I thought of having part of the sauce with pasta and the rest use to make some calzones using this recipe.  I have never made them before?  I cooked enough potatoes on Sunday night to put another meals worth in the freezer as well.

I posted a book review on the book, "A Year of Biblical Womanhood," by Rachel Held Evans here if you are interested.

There are a lot of links in today's post isn't there?

Follow up, cooking and questions..........

Do you remember this dish I bought?

Well I got an answer from the lady at the Wedgwood Museum in England.:

"I do not know if you have access to the publication ‘Adams Ceramics. Staffordshire Potters and Pots, 1779-1998’ by David A. Furniss, J. Richard Wagner and Judith Wagner (Schiffer Publications, 1999. ISBN 0-7643-0847-5) – in the above named work a number of early variations on the Adams’ factory backstamps appear – though I must admit I cannot find one identical to that featured on the item in question – however, although the Prince of Wales’ backstamp is not featured in the appendix at the back of the work, there is a reference to a ‘WA & S’ printed backstamp, which was used by the factory from 1819 to 1861 – and I suspect that this is related to the printed backstamp below the Prince of Wales feathers as portrayed on the image you forwarded.

Stylistically the shape of the dish would seem to correspond with this era of production – and the (almost) pheasants’ eye decoration is very similar to copper plate printed work which has appeared on the Adams factory production again around the time indicated.

It maybe that with a thorough perusal of the above named work – which is excellent – that you will be able to come to a more satisfactory conclusion, but on the face of it I would say yes, that this is a William Adams piece."

 

I have called the library to see if I can borrow that book through inter-library loan, to see if I can find out more about it, but they can't find a copy.  It is nearly $80 to purchase a copy online, so that's out as well. The thing that fascinates me is this area was settled in the 1830's, so this piece may have come over with them?

 

I went grocery shopping on Friday and bought some ground beef and cooked that up with some onions and divided it to go into the freezer.  This is such a great way of dealing with ground beef I wouldn't dream of putting it in the freezer without pre-cooking and dividing it up.

 

Also made a casserole of liver, onions, mushroom and bacon...........I know you either love liver or hate it with a passion.

 

Then dd is hosting her first Thanksgiving dinner on Monday and she asked me to make her some bread sauce.

 

We were invited to go, but are not going which is just as well, as there will be 8 young 'uns between the ages of 23 and 28.  We would be the odd couple out!!!

 

Now for the questions.  I was ironing today when I thought of all of these.

 

1. Do new houses in Britain have airing cupboards?  Ever since we have lived in Canada we have never had an airing cupboard, so we don't technically "aire" our clothes like we did in England.

 

2. How many sets of sheets do you have for each bed.  I was talking to a friend and she washes and dries her sheets in one day and puts them straight back on the bed. 

 

3. How often do you wash your sheets on your bed?  I wash ours every Friday.  Same friend was very evasive when asked!!!!