First Thing on a Monday Morning

 

First thing on a Monday morning I am trying to get into the habit of checking through the previous week's menu plan, ticking off what I did eat and noting what I didn't use up.  Then I try and make those missed off items the first thing that I use on the following week's plan, especially anything that has been in the fridge for a few days.

Then I look in the fridge to double check that yes they are actually there and see what else I have that needs using.  I still have lots of vegetables that I want to use up this week if possible, but luckily everything seems to be in good condition at the moment.

Then using the freezer inventory I did a couple of weeks ago I start to plan out the meals, just roughly on a piece of paper.

Then I give myself a break from that and weigh out the new weeks rations.

I have found ... much to my surprise ... that I use only about one and a half ounces of instant coffee each week, I honestly thought I drank a lot more than that.  Maybe that amount will go up a bit now that the cooler weather seems to be here to stay, we'll see.  But even if it does I have my 2oz a week and the build up of all the extra half ounces that I haven't used, and I have not touched the first month's extra monthly ration of 4oz.

I'm going to have to switch to a bigger jar soon if I carry on having a backlog!!

Now that I have used a good proportion of my sugar for the Compost Heap Jelly I made last week, this weeks ration fitted into the jar easily.

One good thing came out of my search of the kitchen for the jelly bag for straining the fruit ... I found a stash of Love Hearts in one of my enamel containers.  It seems that I can have five packets for my 2oz sweetie ration.  😁

Week Six - Weekly Food Rations

Once everything is weighed I take a photo for the records and then get everything put away.

This is the first week that I am not taking an egg as part of my ration and I have instead chosen to take fish for the next few weeks.  So two veggie sausages instead of one egg, as has been the norm for the first five weeks, and a fish portion instead of the other.  The idea of this is that it will give  me a nice protein rich simple meal.  

This may be re-evaluated in the coming weeks as if I am trying to keep my food spend down this isn't really helping.  Fish is pretty expensive ... and quite rightly so ... and it would make up a large percentage of my £10 per week budget.   I will have to have a look through my cupboard and see what tinned fish I have in.  Although in reality tinned fish was only available through the points system during the war years, however, I may be lenient with myself to use up any reserves that I already have in as wartime housewives would have done ... we'll see.

Some things take a bit of thinking about!  🤔

Anyway after all the menu planning and weighing out it was time for my breakfast, and as per this weeks menu plan this was porridge ... and a well earned cup of coffee.

My Menu Plan for Week Six

Sue xx

Shopping, Fish and Re-workings

Shopping from Sainsbury's £6.50.

I didn't really need to go shopping this week, but as I had to call into Sainsbury's for something completely non-food related I thought I might as well pick up some bread while I was there and also some fish for when I am making up next weeks rations.

I decided at the end of last week that instead of my two eggs each week for the next few weeks at least, I will be taking the two meat-free sausages I have been having since rationing began instead of one of them and instead of the other I will take a single portion of fish.  So once opened this pack will be one portion for this week and the other will go into the freezer for next week.

I saw the potatoes were still on offer at just £1.25 for 2.5kg so I decided to buy a bag of those as well, not realising that I had 7 potatoes still in the fridge.  I don't usually store potatoes in the fridge, it was just during that very hot week recently they were all beginning to sprout in the bag in the kitchen, so I popped them in the fridge drawer right at the back and only discovered them when I went to put the fish away.

As soon as I got home I got the potatoes out of the plastic bag and left them out for an hour to dry off a bit while I had a coffee.  Then I put them into a Stayfresh bag and then into a cotton tote.  Hopefully now it's so much cooler they will last just fine while I work my way through the seven large potatoes in the fridge.

 

I also sat down and did a re-working of my ration plan yesterday to update my new no-egg rations.  Isn't it great having things saved on the computer so  that you can just adjust a few lines instead of starting from scratch.  

I do have to make this rationing malarkey work for me if I want to do it long term and if it takes playing around with things for a while at first I am quite willing to do that.  Sorry if it gets a bit confusing for you when you read the posts. 😌

Sue xx

The Results of a Day in the Kitchen

 

I spent most of Thursday on and off in the kitchen and then just an hour on Friday to cook and pot up the jam.  Time well spent if you look at the results.

I ended up with two and a half pounds of Compost Heap Jelly*.  There are no labels on the jars in this photo as they are still piping hot, but I will label them as soon as they are cold.

*If you want to see how to make this look at yesterday's post which includes a YouTube video from Pam the Jam. 

They are definitely going to be a sweet treat as it took a kilo of sugar for the liquid I had to make the jelly.  It's a good job I only have a thin covering on my toast.  😄

I had decided to turn the roll of puff pastry that I had instead of my fats and oils this on weeks rations into as many things as I could.  In the end I managed to get four meals from it.

Two quiche bases part cooked and now in the fridge ready to turn into quick lunches over the weekend, one breakfast jam turnover that I had yesterday, very sweet but also very delicious.  What a wartime treat that would have been.

And a Sausage Plait that I had for my tea when it was hot straight out of the oven.  Served with just some salad from the garden and a drizzle of mayo, it was tasty and very filling.

This is what it looked like inside it's pastry overcoat.

I thawed two Linda McCartney sausages out and made up a couple of tablespoons of dried stuffing mix, then stirred the two together before forming into this patty shape.  I was aiming to have something that looked like the old Linda McCartney Sausage Plaits that were sadly discontinued many years ago and that a lot of people miss.  Then I decided a little smear of the garlic Jam that I still have left over from last Christmas would be good on top.

 I cut slits either side of the patty and criss-crossed them over until everything was covered.  I brushed it with milk and cooked it for about 30 minutes alongside everything else to make full use of the oven space.  I pulled the quiche bases out first, then the turnover and finally the sausage plait.

Inside the turnover was just a big dollop of this months jam, not quite as big as it looks in this photo!!  

I'm think that I'm doing really well as I haven't touched the other half of my bi-monthly jam ration so it's all going to plan ... up to now, and of course I have my new jars of jam which will be available to me at any time as they have been made from scraps and my ration of sugar.  Either for me to eat or to give as gifts.

So I think that was a good day in the kitchen, three things made off this weeks menu and a bonus breakfast to replace my porridge yesterday.  And using this pastry made me realise that homemade shortcrust pastry is definitely better, which is a good thing because during the war years there was definitely no shop bought, ready rolled pastry available.  In future making my own will be so much cheaper, mere pennies instead of the current Aldi price for a roll which is £1.19, so much kinder to my budget.

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

 

Busy in the Kitchen ... and YouTube

 

I'm busy in the kitchen today, I'm sorry there wasn't a blog post up first thing this morning, but there should be one tomorrow once I've finished what I'm making ... and cleared up all my mess.  

In the meantime here's a really nice little YouTube film for you to watch over a cup of coffee, I love this one as it explains everything so well.

https://youtu.be/o9wNJ78S2GY

Back tomorrow.

Sue xx