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Weezl and friends Phase 2 -giving it a whirl for Shirl! Testing meal plan for a month
Comments
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There is no linkie to my blog because I'd forgotten that I hadn't linked. I started the blog because I wanted a diary for just me, to remind me in years to come of the kind of silly little things in life that get forgotten all too easily. It was also a diary of my road to being a smallholder. I didn't think anybody else would ever find me in cyberspace let alone be interested in any of my witterings.
Shall I start being pernickety
with the text on the website yet? How do you want me to send you the corrections - ie in what format and also in a pm or...? 0 -
"How to save more money" or "Make it even cheaper" or "Make it better for less" or "Ways to make it even cheaper"?I don't think 'growing your own' sits comfortably under a heading of 'cooking advice'.
Where might people like to see it situated on the site?Any question, comment or opinion is not intended to be criticism of anyone else.2 Samuel 12:23 Romans 8:28 Psalm 30:5
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die"0 -
and often sites never get that high if their area of interest is already taken up by lots of big popular sites.It comes near the bottom of page two. It takes a while to get to the top of the SERPS unless you choose a really obscure keyword.
I'm very chuffed with page 2 personally, and we haven't even listed yet, just the robots found us
And now it sounds like a science fiction movie
:hello:Jonathan 'Fergie' Fergus William, born 05/03/09, 7lb 4.4oz:hello:
Benjamin 'Kezzie' Kester Jacob, born 18/03/10, 7lb 5oz:)
cash neutral gifts 2011, value of purchased gifts/actual paid/amount earnt to cover it £67/£3.60/£0
january grocery challenge, feed 4 of us for £400 -
Batch cooking: save time – save energy – save money
It is a good idea to take a few minutes before you start on the planner to read the recipes and check how the preparation and cooking times fit in with your week. A little bit of planning can save you a lot of time, a great deal of energy, and a fair bit of money.
Once in the oven
Heating up the oven uses up a lot of fuel - making sure that the oven is full of goodies every time you switch it on will cut your fuel bills right down.
Many of the recipes in the planner have already taken this into account. The bread recipe gives quantities for a batch of four loaves, and the pizza recipe quantities are for a batch of 12 individual pizzas - enough to see a family of four through the month.
When you make your four loaves of bread, keep one out to use immediately, and freeze the remaining three. You can slice all the loaves before freezing them to avoid the last minute panic when you forget to defrost a loaf in time. Individual slices defrost in minutes. Breadcrumbs can be swept up into a container kept in the freezer and used in recipes at a later date.
Alternatively, slice one loaf and make it up into sandwiches - they can be popped into a lunchbox straight from the freezer and will be defrosted and ready to eat by lunchtime; freeze the remaining two loaves whole or as half-loaves and defrost as needed.
Pizza dough can be made in a triple batch and dough frozen in individual batches, as can pizza topping sauce. Take out of the freezer the night before so the dinner becomes no more than a quick assembly job. Or, if you have a lot of space in the freezer, you can be really organised and roll out and spread with topping a month's supply at once and freeze individually. Can be cooked straight from the freezer.
When baking any of the snacks, check the cooking times and temperatures to see if you can make a couple of batches at once; all the snacks can be frozen for use later in the month. Alternatively, if you make ahead and freeze onion tart and are using the oven to reheat, plan to make a batch of scones or biscuits at the same time. If you are already using the oven for something else when cooking a main meal served with potatoes, you can use the oven to make potato wedges. – add recipe
Once on the hob…
Dried pulses – chickpeas and marrowfats - can all be soaked and cooked in one big batch, then frozen in meal-sized portions. Cooked pulses weigh roughly twice as much as their dried counterparts, so bear that in mind when following a recipe. This is probably the biggest time and money saver on the hob, so worth doing even if you are not planning to do too much batch cooking in the course of the month.
Investing in a steamer - or improvising with a colander or metal sieve over a saucepan of boiling water - so you can boil potatoes and steam the vegetables at the same time will mean that you are using only one hob ring instead of two or three. If you are boiling the potatoes instead of cooking them in the oven, you can either serve them with the mayo, or make a Croatian potato salad. – add recipe
Bacon and onion pudding takes a long time to steam, so it’s best done ahead if you can and frozen. You can reheat it either in the microwave or in the oven.
Pizza sauce, the sauce for pasta amatriciana, bean curry, chilli mince, and the cottage pie base can each be done in one big batch and frozen.
… or in the slow cooker
A slow cooker is cheaper to run and needs less attention than the hob. If you have one, use it to cook pulses, steam bacon and onion pudding, poach chicken (perhaps add the method in here?) and make stock from the chicken carcass.
Once in the kitchen
Even washing up costs money! Planning to prepare the ingredients or make dishes that use food processor in a single session will streamline your kitchen life in more ways than one. Use the food processor to chop your onions and freeze them for later; pay some attention to the order in which you make your spreads. Apple curd can be followed by nut butter, tangy bean pate by liver pate, but doing the other way round will require washing up in between.
Same goes for dishes that require rolling out on the worktop one after the other. Pastry can all be done ahead and frozen in batches; or you can make some scones or biscuits when the work surface is already floury after making a pie. Chicken and onion pies are best done all in a single batch and frozen until needed.
If you grate your block of cheese as soon as you get the shopping home and pop it into a container in the freezer you will avoid it disappearing in clandestine sandwiches, as well as saving time when preparing the evening meal. Same goes for bacon - slice or chop and freeze in meal-sized portions. And if you can't face all the weighing out and portioning up at this stage, don't worry - just chop up small, spread on baking sheet and freeze. Once frozen, remove with a spatula or fish slice and pop in a plastic bag - just take out of the freezer and weigh out as necessary.
Putting it into practice
In order to make the plan work for you, it is a good idea to start with a concentrated burst of cooking to get as much out of the way as possible. Certain things, such as bread and the spreads, have to be made ahead whereas others (grating cheese, soaking and cooking chickpeas) will speed up your cooking later in the week.
To help you we have written out a step-by-step guide to your first batch cooking day. This could just as easily be split into two morning sessions, over Saturday & Sunday for example. If you are very busy then choose two of the spreads (apple curd, pate, nut butter, houmous) and two of the snacks (carrot cake, raisin scones, cheese scones, savoury bites) to start you off, and fit in other recipes when you have a bit of time to spare.0 -
Yes - recipes is quite a large area. I think page two is pretty good and should result in a significant number of hits. I sometimes get hits on my blog for random searches where I'm much further down than page two. Although obviously the topic is going to affect how likely people are to go through multiple pages. I'd say recipes is definitely one where I trawl through a few pages of results.and often sites never get that high if their area of interest is already taken up by lots of big popular sites.
I'm very chuffed with page 2 personally, and we haven't even listed yet, just the robots found usAny question, comment or opinion is not intended to be criticism of anyone else.2 Samuel 12:23 Romans 8:28 Psalm 30:5
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die"0 -
well I wasn't sure if the poor editors were getting frustrated with the somewhat dynamic nature of the content :rotfl:Shall I start being pernickety with the text on the website yet? How do you want me to send you the corrections - ie in what format and also in a pm or...?
:hello:Jonathan 'Fergie' Fergus William, born 05/03/09, 7lb 4.4oz:hello:
Benjamin 'Kezzie' Kester Jacob, born 18/03/10, 7lb 5oz:)
cash neutral gifts 2011, value of purchased gifts/actual paid/amount earnt to cover it £67/£3.60/£0
january grocery challenge, feed 4 of us for £400 -
Book suggestion:
Low-Cost Living: Live better, spend less
by John Harrison
published by Right Way in May 2009
ISBN 978-0716022114
currently £2.10 postage free on Amazon UK0 -
Allegra - what was that about a coconut loaf please? Off topic, I know, but - recipe or link to recipe please? Thanks hopefully.
It was the one Shaz posted on the 50p thread, yes. IIRC, it's 1 cup SR flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup dessicated coconut and 1 cup milk per loaf, bake for 40 min on 160 fan. I'll try and track it down for you in a bit.0 -
"How to save more money" or "Make it even cheaper" or "Make it better for less" or "Ways to make it even cheaper"?
but from the cooking advice page still?
:hello:Jonathan 'Fergie' Fergus William, born 05/03/09, 7lb 4.4oz:hello:
Benjamin 'Kezzie' Kester Jacob, born 18/03/10, 7lb 5oz:)
cash neutral gifts 2011, value of purchased gifts/actual paid/amount earnt to cover it £67/£3.60/£0
january grocery challenge, feed 4 of us for £400
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