Do I Follow the Menu Plan? One Days Meals

 

Someone asked me if I followed the menu plan rigidly, most days the answer would be yes.  

I am doing a menu plan to help keep myself on track and to take that 'What can I have for tea?' quandary off the table each day.  There's nothing worse to me than standing in front of the fridge or cupboard, hungry and wanting something quickly and just not knowing what to have.  That's the time when all good intentions can fly out of the window and I risk eating rubbish, which then leaves me unsatisfied and leads to nibbling all evening.

But ... I am very open to switching the meals or the days around.

So I will eat a Tuesday meal for Monday's tea and vice versa.  The main thing for me is to have seven evening meals, seven lunches and seven breakfasts written down and ready for inspiration.  Some weeks, like last week for example, things crop up, time runs away with me or we go out and a meal isn't eaten at all.  That's when I can add the missing meal to the next weeks Menu Plan to make sure that nothing gets wasted and everything gets enjoyed while it is in the best possible condition.

So to me a menu plan isn't written in stone, it is a daily reminder of what I think will be balanced for me over the course of the week, what is ready and waiting to be eaten and what I hope to be eating each day.

As you can see from these photos and this weeks Menu Plan Monday went very well.  😁

Sue xx

Making Compost Heap Jelly ... and Using the Pastry

 

Yesterday I decided to use all the little bags of fruit scraps from the freezer, a punnet of raspberries that had been in the freezer for over two years, some dried up mandarin oranges that I had frozen and a few of the apples from our tree to make some Compost Heap Jelly.

My first stage was to get everything into a pan pour over a kettle full of recently boiled water so that it would be possible to cut everything up a bit, and then bring it to the boil.

I left it simmering away for about an hour with the lid on and then mashed it all up a bit with my masher.  After another 20 minutes of simmering I turned off the heat and left it to cool in the pan for an hour still with the lid on.  I wanted every bit of flavour and goodness out of all the mush.

Then after a mad look around the kitchen to find my straining bag, before remembering that my old one had broken and I had bought a new one and put it in a completely different place, I finally found it and got my fruity mush straining.

There was so much juice that i had to go old school and lift the straining bag higher over the jug.  Tying it with string to my kitchen cupboard.  I let it drip, drip, drip slowly at first and then I decided i didn't need crystal clear jelly I needed volume so I gave it a good squeeze.

I ended up with over 2 pints of lovely fruity juice.

And a little pile of mush that I put outside for the wasps for a while, before tipping it into the compost bin.

As well as this and as soon as I had a clear worktop I was making good use of my roll of puff pastry, that I took as part of this weeks rations.  Four meals worth of pastry products.

https://youtu.be/-jwQnlKSxQI?si=dYbieaSvYUxarB23

Today it's  time to boil up my juice with my sugar ration and make myself lots of lovely Compost Heap Jelly.  The beauty of jelly over jam is that the tasks can be split over two days.   Here's Pam who can describe how to do it all so much better than I can.

Sue xx

 

This Week's Menu Plan ... and Christmas Wish List Plans

 

This is my menu plan for this week.

As you can see it doesn't appear very 'wartime', as in I am not trying out any recipes from my books this week, but I am using my rations for all the foods that they are needed for, and not just helping myself willy-nilly from the food cupboard.  There is nothing that I need to shop for to be able to make any of these meals and that is my main criteria at the moment.

The Smoothie that appears twice for breakfast is going to be made from two homemade smoothie mixes that I have in the freezer, simply chopped apple, spinach and chunks of banana all ready to go ... it's been four weeks since I've tasted banana.  🍌

This is Monday nights evening meal as shown on the menu plan, a simple Jacket Potato with a little sprinkle of cheese and salad from the garden.

And this is Tuesday's breakfast.  

I have decided that I am not a fan of apple in porridge any more.

As I mentioned on yesterday's post I have already started to make a Christmas present wish list, every year without fail my sons, my Mum and Alan ask me what I would like and every year I say 'I don't know'.  With this year being completely different I will be asking for things that I really need to keep me stocked up on specific items for the following year.  

For example I have already completely run out of hand-cream, so a twelve months supply of that from someone would be lovely, and much more useful to me than the myriad of bottles of wine I received last year, not that I didn't enjoy them .... hic!!

Sue xx

Salads, Growing at Home and Freezers

 

It's definitely the weather for salads at the moment.

Luckily I have my own tomatoes, spring onions, lettuce leaves of a few varieties, cucumbers and the last few blueberries and raspberries to eat straight from the garden this weekend.

I'm still getting at least one cucumber a day from the two plants that I have in the smaller bed at the end of the garden, as many spring onions as I need each day, and suddenly thanks to this week's heatwave nearly all the tomatoes are ready for picking.

And I'm very happy about that, I'm thinking of roasting them all with some garlic from the freezer (which reminds me I must plant some garlic soon ready for next year) and some onions.  Whizzed up and then popped into the freezer in single serving sizes of sauce it will be lovely to have some Summer freshness later in the year. 

Aren't we so lucky to have freezers, I just cannot imagine not having one now.  The ease and money saving they bring to our lives is just something to be really grateful for.  

The first freezers did appear in the 1940s, known then as a 'deep freeze', but they did not go into mass production until after World War II and didn't appear in homes until the 1950s when they became a bit more affordable.  The earliest freezer section in a fridge was like this one, which is a British refrigerator from the 1940s.

I remember us having a gas fridge in our little pantry-sized kitchen when I was growing up in the 1960s.  It whirred away, occasionally making fizzing and popping noises that we just got used to, and when we opened the door to get the milk out we had to catch the door of the tiny freezer compartment that wasn't attached to anything and fell off every single time.

Sue xx

My Weekly Rations - Week Four

 

Here are my weekly rations for this week.

 I don't really know if it's worth photographing them every week as the only thing changing at the moment seems to be the sweet ration.  But I guess it holds me accountable to myself, and I at least get to see what I have over from the previous week as I top up jars and dig things out from the cupboard, fridge and freezer.

So perhaps it is.

My usual sugar canister was too full for me to be able add this weeks 8oz to it, so I gave the sugar ration another jar as I topped it up from the bag of sugar in the cupboard.

The cheese was easy, it was the other half of last weeks Violife Extra Mature block.  This week I grated it rather than just leaving it as a block and it looks a lot more that way doesn't it.

There was a little smidge over as the scales reached the magical number ... so I just popped it into my mouth.  It wasn't big enough to save and there were no dogs to bee seen, so it was all mine. 😉

I weighed out this weeks combined butter/margarine ration straight into the butter dish.

The spread that was left over from last week and which was still in the tub, weighed in at exactly 4oz.  I think I will use this up today and make some scones and some pastry.  It feels like it's been ages since I've had a pie or pasty!

This weeks 2oz of olive oil that I am taking in place of lard, only just fitted into the little jar that I have been using, and the other jar is still in the food cupboard.  So I am ahead with the oil too.  Maybe some more pastry will need to be made to use it up.  😃

My sweet ration this week is slightly over on the scales, but I'm hoping the extra 3/8oz will vanish when the things are unwrapped, if not, well it doesn't really matter.  I would rather be using up what I already have in than going out buying little bits of sweets that will fit exactly into the right weights.

Talking of using up, this mornings breakfast was last week's egg ... it's like an action replay of last weeks happenings!! 

 It seems that one egg a week is just fine for me.  I might take away the extra half a dozen that I was going to allow myself to have each month in place of the dried egg ration and just buy half a dozen once a month, having one egg each week on the menu and the other two as spares, for baking or some other extra.

It's been really good over the last three full weeks of rationing.  I am slowly but surely getting used to having some limitations, while at the same time being quite amazed that I am not really touching too much of the things that were already in the cupboard and freezer from 'before rations'.  At this rate my supplies will be going down really slowly and there's nothing really to worry about.  👌

This week instead of reading recipe books and about the history of the wartime home front years, I decided to read the follow on to the television series Home Fires.

The first book in the set follows on exactly from where that second series so annoyingly left us, up in the air with so many loose ends just waiting to be tied off.  They never were, as despite the viewing figures being very impressive it just wasn't recommissioned for a third series.  I don't often read fiction but I am really enjoying this, and I managed to read over half of it while we were at the Welsh flat over the weekend.

Sue xx

Waste Not Want Not, and Make Do and Mend

 

Another colourful breakfast straight from the garden to my plate in less than 10 minutes.

Oh gosh that was tasty, although I need to remember that those yellow tomatoes cook so much faster than the red ones, they were on the point of dissolving.  Just two tomatoes, one large spring onion and a sprinkle of garlic granules on two of my 'tipped over' slices of bread toasted.

When our last tenant moved out of the Welsh flat he left a lot of kitchen bits in the wheelie bin and amongst them was this lovely old tin.  This is it after I gave it a good clean with a brillo pad.  It was in a bit of a state before.

I'm trying to make my mind up whether it's a genuine old Betty Crocker tin or a more modern replica.  It does feel like it has some age about it.  Whatever the answer is I have decided that I'm keeping it, just because I like it.

And because 'Waste Not Want Not' and 'Make Do and Mend' are the wartime mantras that I am living my life by.  

Sue xx

The Victory Garden ... and at last a Homegrown Large RED Tomato

My little garden with it's two wooden raised beds and the few pots and planting boxes that I have,  has now been officially renamed - The Victory Garden.

And as if to celebrate the renaming, my monthly subscription of Kitchen Garden arrived with it's usual three packets of free seeds for me to plant this month.

Cabbages, Parsley and Lettuce seeds will be going in the beds in a couple of weeks.  And I decided to take them up on the cover offer of 'Free Autumn Planting Onions Sets', I also ordered some garlic to put in at the same time.  So that will be all the beds filled again by the end of September.

The Victory Garden is not having the Winter off this year!!

And just in time for breakfast this morning my first large red tomato turned red.  Seen here with it's cousin who's plants have already given us a few red cherry tomatoes.

And of course we've already been eating the yellow ones, just a few up to now but they are very tasty.  I've had my eyes on that beautiful big tomato for days now, watching it change from green to pale tinged red to full blown red this morning.

And my gosh was it delicious.

I sliced and cooked it gently with some garlic powder and the green tops of a spring onion, also from the garden and ate it on a piece of buttered toast.  The simplest and most delicious meal I've eaten for ages.

I'll be watching all the other tomatoes very closely now. 

Sue xx

 

New Week, New Rations ... and Leftovers

 

After being away for the weekend, yes ... the rations came too ... I am struggling to get back to normal this morning.  So to get myself organised I decided to weigh out this weeks rationed foods.  I used last weeks milk but poured it into one of my litre sized bottles, with the idea that if I can see it properly I might use it up this week.  And this week's cheese is what's left in this 'cream cheese' tub, about two thirds.  It was already opened in the fridge and needs using up soon.

It was a case of topping some of the containers up as I didn't use all of last weeks rations, they've gone a lot further than I thought they would.  Thank goodness for modern scales that I can zero and not have to do maths first thing on a Monday morning.  😄

I was surprised at how much coffee I had left after last week, but I have been getting into the habit of making my coffee a little bit weaker by getting my usual spoonful from the jar and then knocking a little bit of the coffee back in.  I did well and had almost a full ounce left to add this weeks two ounces.

This week's sweet ration - two little bars of dark chocolate.

The leftovers from last week, photographed for posterity.

All of my milk ration, virtually all of my sugar ration, about half of the butter ration, almost half of the coffee ration, two thirds of the oil and even two of my three packs of 'sweets' from the sweetie ration.  I do need to try harder to use all the rations, because it was the combination of the foods on ration and the amount you got that made for healthy eating.

Although I guess being low on the sugar can only be a good thing!!

Oh, and I also had my two sausages left over, tucked away in the freezer. 

What has really helped stretch my rationed goods and the things in the fridge has been the regular little harvests from the garden.  I halved all this with Alan for our lunches.

And made myself what was going to be a one egg cheesy tomato omelette ...

But it slopped out of the pan in a gloriously tasty cheesy mess.

While it was out of the fridge I decided to use the last of the cheese up by making myself a nice 'sandwich spread' for later, with a couple more spring onions two chopped tomatoes and large splodge of the opened mayo from the fridge.

So it was a good first week, a bit disorganised with meals grabbed from the fridge on the spur of the moment rather than properly planned, but this week I intend to make a basic menu plan and follow a few more wartime recipes ... and not leave all my cheese until the last minute and eat it all at once.

Sue xx

Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb ... and Garlic Kievs

I picked all the rhubarb from our little garden last week.  The one plant we have there was HUGE and was taking up far too much space, the amount of rhubarb it has given us is brilliant for it's first year in situ, this is the second harvest that we have had, the first one a little bit smaller.

Once washed and chopped I divided it between two bags so we could have half each.

Almost 3lbs each of lovely homegrown rhubarb from my little Victory Garden.  Now tucked safely in Alan's freezer as mine is full to capacity.  It means we will both have lovely homegrown fruit for Winter use. 

 (Yes, I know officially it's a vegetable. 😄) 

The reason my freezer had no room for the rhubarb!!

This is the inventory that I did last week and it has all these things on it.  When these things are used up gradually over time, more than half of them will not be replaced.  Although I might allow myself a sneaky Garlic Kiev every now and then. 😏

Sue xx