A Rookie Mistake

Today I did the first stage in my epic cook-ahead marathon. The supermarket delivery arrived late on Friday night but Saturday was filled with unpacking, choir and a concert in London, whilst this morning was spent attending three different breakfasts and watching Doctor Who (far more time-critical than finishing the unpacking, of course).

So this evening as I was cooking my dinner I decided to make a start on the list of meals for the freezer. I made a batch of spaghetti bolognese sauce without any difficulties other than the inexplicable absence of the plastic lids for my freezer boxes - one portion of sauce is currently freezing lidless. Then I put a bag of kidney beans into water to soak ready for chilli con carne tomorrow, and tackled a new recipe: Quorn fillet chasseur. It should have been simple...

Meal Planning with Scrivener

I recently downloaded the trial version of Scrivener to use on a university project, and while I was experimenting with the features I discovered it had a template for recipes. It got me thinking, and I'm now in the process of creating a complete meal-planning system using the program.

Obviously the purpose of the template is to store recipes, but I already have a fairly good system for that - I spent a day this summer formatting my recipe file and I mostly cook things without a recipe anyway. Far more useful is the fact that I can create a menu for the week, a shopping list, a list of what I have in the cupboards and link them all together, as well as include any new recipes I want to try. Of course I could do this without Scrivener too, using different files and saving them in the same folder, but it just seems more fun (and more efficient) with my fancy new software!

Last week I put in an order on the Sainsbury's website to arrive the day after I move back into college. I've got a couple of days free before term starts and I've planned a lot of batch cooking. This year will be even busier than last year, but starting out with a month's worth of meals in the freezer should make it easier. My kitchen this year has a table in it, which will make more difference than I would ever have imagined before I spent two years without one, and is not far from my room (without three sets of fire doors in between either!), and a friend has sold me her fridge as my new room didn't have one, and it has a good freezer compartment and more space than my old one. All in all, it should be an easier year meal-wise.

Chickpeas with Tomato Sauce

This is a recipe I adapted from an ebook recipe from Slow Cooking for Vegetarians, which has some great recipes I want to try. I didn't make it in a slow cooker, I made it on the stove, and I cheated on the herbs - I just used some mixed dry herbs and a tin of canned tomatoes with chillis rather than fresh chillis. But it turned out delicious anyway. All you need is a can of chickpeas - I used about 250g, I think, which was half the can, a can of chopped tomatoes, some chillis if they aren't included with the tomatoes, and some herbs. I fried the herbs and tomatoes in some olive oil for a few minutes, whilst the chickpeas were boiling in a separate pan for about ten minutes. Then I drained the peas, added the tomato mix to the saucepan, added some extra water (this step was probably unnecessary, to be honest) and simmered it until the liquid had evaporated off. It was served on top of rice and very delicious. I'll be making it again soon to use up the other half of the chickpeas, and I'll take a photo next time.

Ratatouille-Style Mince

I'm in the thick of exams still and realised yesterday that I've barely seen a vegetable this week, except at church supper on Sunday night. So I decided to use up the remaining third of a courgette and the aubergine which have been languishing in Lakeland Stayfresh Bags (which are seriously brilliant, I think I bought this veg two weeks ago at least and it's still totally fine, it looks no more than two days old). I chopped them up, and threw them into my slow cooker with a bag of meatfree mince and a carton of creamed tomatoes.

Once it's cooked, I'll eat it with a serving of easy cheesy lentils to get plenty of protein in. I'm planning a run later this evening, so lots of veg and protein is the order of the day.

One of the fellows at my college tells us every exam season "don't eat beige meals". It's a simple rule of thumb, but an excellent one. I fear my diet has indeed been rather beige this week, but things will change the day after tomorrow when I'm finally free! I'm envisaging a mountain of spinach, I've been hankering for spinach all week.

Delicious Stew

Using another of my beloved packet mixes and my wonderful slow cooker, I made a delicious stew today. A leek, some frozen broccoli, half of the largest onion I have ever bought, two Quorn fillets and some random pieces of Quorn, all thrown into the cooker with a packet of chicken casserole mix (once again meat-free, although I had to check carefully) and cooked for seven hours. It was amazing to come into my room and have a hot, tasty meal ready for me - especially since for some reason I am feeling very wobbly this week. I haven't fainted at all but I keep becoming light headed. Coincidentally I've got a health check up next week so if I haven't wobbled all the way over by that point I'll bring it up.

Vegetarian Chilli con Carne

Since the success of the vegetable stew, made with a chicken casserole spice mix, I have been buying packet mixes far more often. They're useful because the recipe is printed on the back and very easy to follow with few, uncomplicated ingredients, and despite the fact that they usually include meat, the actual packet mix is normally vegetarian. During my weekly shop I discovered that the Schwartz mixes were 2 for £1, so I had a sift through to find the ones marked vegetarian and came home with a chilli con carne mix and a shepherd's pie mix.

A recipe AND an ingredient all in one!

Slow-Cooker Curry Experiment

The end result was bright orange and delicious

Because of my mission to empty and defrost the freezer, I haven't been cooking and freezing anything lately. Meals have been whatever I can get together quickly; risotto a couple of nights, sausages and salad in burger buns on others, until I have reached the point where my freezer now contains three almost-finished Quorn packets of various types, some broccoli, some bread and the last two pieces of spinach quiche. The trouble is that with term in full swing once more and my new schedule involving very early mornings but not much earlier nights, I'm not managing to cook dinner before I fall asleep. Last night I found myself eating a Graze box as my evening meal, after a lunch of salad leaves between mayonnaise-smeared bread, and I decided it was time to get sorted.